By William Herff

I

Not long ago, on an April afternoon, I was a picture of high life, bathing in the kitchen sink, sipping orange juice at intervals, and reading my roommate John’s screenplay, Applecake Mansions. I was not uncomfortable, as I had feared I might be; rather, I discovered the sink could hold my tall, stooping figure rather agreeably, so long as I tucked my legs behind my ears and compressed my rib cage to the size of a cashew. When you lived in Los Angeles back then, dreams came true all the time.

Anyhow, I was loafing my way through John’s manuscript, with time taken out for lathering and playing with my boats, when I came to those fateful words, “The End.” At the moment, I was so impressed, so taken by John’s characters—the femme fatale, the Christ figure, and the toll free caller—that I leapt from the basin and cried, “Hallelujah, that’s a hit!” Unfortunately, on the way down, I landed on a sudsy loofah that conducted my bare person across the kitchen floor, through the french doors, and off the terrace. As luck would have it, John was pulling into the driveway at the exact moment of the accident and managed to catch my soapy body smack on his windshield. I rebounded into the adjacent landscaping, adroitly crushing the landlord’s newly planted tulips, as Ursa Major appeared in my eyes. Then my head was swimming an athletic butterfly into oblivion. When I came to, I was back in the apartment, propped up on the divan by the window with a rag on my head. Thankfully, my ears were still attached; for some reason, I thought I’d lost them in the fall. By and large, it was a pleasant bout of unconsciousness, filled with dreams about Applecake Mansions. John was sitting next to me, looking tired. Now felt like a perfect moment to clap him on the back, cheer him up, and tell him how much I loved the screenplay.

II

Here’s a lesson for all of us: just because your friend puts a great movie script in a small steel vault under their bed does not mean they want you to read it. Even if the vault was kind of, sort of hanging open. “But John,” I squeaked, as John choked me into the divan like the man in Angry Puppet Killer. “The movie will be a hit.” For one panicky moment, I thought John would continue to choke me like a worthless marionette. But he stopped, and we slid to the floor, two tired puppets, dropped by the puppet master. Patently, my omission had had a terrific impact on the fellow, and after a second he squinted at me with tears in his eyes.

“You really think so?” John murmured with an earnestness I’d never before seen in the man. “You think it’s a hit?”

“A hundred times yes, John, a smash hit, even.”
John gave me that incredulous John look.
“Now, don’t give me that face, boychick. I’m dead solemn. It’s going to make a billion dollars. And that’s a promise.”
At this, John smelled the truth and smiled a big smile. I smiled back. And we shook hands.

That evening I stood dramatically on the terrace, puffing bilious clouds from a cigar I had found earlier in John’s vault labeled, “From Great Grandpa.” I babbled about all the unforgettable moments in Applecake Mansions, even the racy parts, as John listened from the kitchen. He was so happy about the praise that he cooked us up a lentil feast. I’d never seen a lentil dinner cooked up faster in my life. Vats of lentils came off the stove five at a time. Plates of lentils were being tossed around like frisbees. You get a plate. You get a plate. You get a plate. Looking back, I will never understand why there were so many plates. I loved lentils, as did John. Lentils were said to bring good luck. In fact, my Uncle Holden once said every lentil was like a little coin, and each time you ate a lentil, your body would be ready to ingest a real coin, and everytime you ingested a real coin something would happen. I never figured out what that something was—visitor hours were over—but I have a feeling it was extraordinary.

The feast was enjoyed. The lentils were savored. Bulk quantities of good luck were accrued. When we were full and in high spirits, I broached the final and most important item on my agenda. I began:

“Well, this has been a Dionysian affair, John boy.” “Pass me that vat of lentils, will ya?”
I began to pass him the vat.
“No, the other vat.”

“This one?”
“No. The smaller vat, the one next to the gigantic vat.”
I passed him the smaller vat, the one next to the gigantic vat.
“An utterly Dionysian affair, old sport, and I thank you for it. Now, re Applecake

Mansions, do you know what you need, Johns? An agent!”
John sputtered some nonsense about agents being dishonest and so forth, but when I told him that I wanted to be his agent, he seemed to consider the possibility. Had I ever been an agent? No. “But neither had Buck Simpson,” I reassured John, and the funny thing is, I made that name up. So after several minutes of cajoling, John eventually gave in and said I could give it a crack for a week. I was so excited I swept him off his feet. “Thank you, thank you John,” I said. “You can count on me buddy-oh, you can count on me!”

III
The next morning the sun was warm and brilliant as I drove to St. Yves Bistro for breakfast. The restaurant was a handsome colonial affair in a nice neighborhood with wide streets and palm trees and a dog park next door. Inside, white wood paneling lined a bright commodious room where bigwigs sat around discussing this or that vehicle for this or that actor. When I walked in, I was teased by notes of pancake, and because I told the maître ď I was an agent, I got the best table in the place, right by the bathroom.

Anyhow, I was casting my agent’s eyes about the place when I noticed a waitress across the room. As I studied her, somewhere in my brain I heard a click, and that’s when I realized she was The One—tall, lovely, dark hair, brown eyes, vital, chic. A terrific smile. She glided from table to table like a ghost, a beautiful ghost who haunted you with her beauty. She was a vision of debilitating loveliness. Soon she was making her way to my table in slow motion. And then she was there, right in front of me, beaming, the apotheosis of my dreams, in a soft white cotton dress and a name tag that read Lucy. She laughed and said hi. I said hi back. Then we just looked at each other for a moment, and I racked my brain for something witty to say, but I was so sick with tension I couldn’t seem to think of anything funny—anything funny, that is, except hand puppets.

At length Lucy asked me what I’d like to eat, and though I tried to fight the Jiminy Cricket who kept chanting “hand puppet” into my ears, I soon succumbed to the stupefying powers of love, and, raising my hand while moving my fingers to give the illusion of speech, ventriloquized in a high pitched southern accent that still makes me sweat with embarrassment:

“What’s a fella got to do around here to get some French toast.”
The puppet was met with a silence one associates with the bottom of the ocean. And as Lucy disappeared into the kitchen, she left behind an air that suggested I no longer factored into her Hollywood story. Or maybe it was the nearby facilities playing tricks on my olfactory glands. I couldn’t quite tell.

What a disaster, I thought later as I ate the French toast. But then I remembered I was an agent and felt better. I applied the maple syrup. I shook my head. I still had a job to do. And, maybe, if I did my job well, got Applecake Mansions made into a major motion picture, maybe Lucy would see me on TV one day and be touched when I dedicated an award to her. Yes. I decided to call John and give him an update.

After rifling through my tweeds for half an hour, I realized I had forgotten my cellphone at home. I exhaled for a long while and was still exhaling when Lucy glided by to drop off the tab. At this juncture, I heard a dumb little sound which turned out to be my own voice:

“So this is positively embarrassing, especially after the whole hand puppet business, but I just realized that I forgot my phone at home, and I really have to ring my friend John, who’s also my client—I’m an agent, you see—and I was wondering if I could borrow your cell phone, for a second, if it’s not too much to ask, um.”

Lucy clenched her jaw and pressed her lips together, which I took as a pretty good sign. She then reached into her pocket, pulled her phone out, and said to make it quick. I thanked her loads and began punching in John’s number and had just about punched it in when a call came through. The contact read MAX VESUVIUS PRODUCER, in all caps, just like that. The Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder told me I shouldn’t answer it, but then again, that was the same cricket who told me hand puppets were a viable flirting strategy. I wrestled with the ethical dilemma for only a split second and, after looking up to make sure Lucy was off doing Lucy things, I lifted the phone to my ear. A raspy metallic voice buzzed through. Softly, carefully, I spoke:

“Lucy’s phone…Uh-huh… Yes…Uh-huh, Yep! Exactly. This is her agent. Oh! You saw her reel. I’m glad!…Swell…Swell…I’ll certainly have her give you a call back when she gets a chance…Swell…can I have a good number?…address?…”

I copied the details onto a dirty napkin as a fantasy played in my head: I was the fledgling agent; Lucy was the fledgling actress, and Max Vesuvuius was the Hollywood producer living at 514 Ocean Drive. Hot diggity, did we have a picture on our hands!

IV
Vesuvius’s place was up high on Ocean Drive and lavish. A tall glass fence encircled the place. There was a big yard with glass sculptures and a glass house. Somewhere I could hear a glass sprinkler sprinkling. I rang the glass buzzer by the gate. A woman sporting a pair of cat-eye glasses appeared among the glass. She cut across the lawn. “Hello there,” she said, “You must be Gerard.”

I was about to say no when I remembered that old chestnut, “fake it till you make it.” That was the first thing they taught you as a seller of autographs, and I had been one in my twenties. I extended my hand. “Yes,” I said, “I’m Gerard. Charmed, utterly charmed.”

“The family will be so happy to see you,” the woman said.
The family? I raised my eyebrows as far north as Finland and started backing up to the street. But alas I was too slow. In an instant, Cat-eyes had her paw around my wrist and was dragging me pell-mell through the gate. She batted me towards the house, explaining that everyone was waiting in the orange grove and that we shouldn’t dawdle now.

Vesuvius’s orange grove was in full bloom and looked out onto the sun-kissed shores of the Pacific. I was led down a gravel path as notes of citrus danced the cha cha in my nostrils. Soon, I was in the middle of the grove, and there was a white gazebo and some horses tied to the gazebo, and a group of rich-looking people smoking and drinking champagne in the sweet evening air. Cat-eyes slinked off. I was sad to see her go.

“Gerard.” A voice boomed out like so many sticks of dynamite. “You made it!” The gazebo creaked, as the party alighted and thronged around me in one buzzing ball. I met Max Vesuvius, canine-faced, florid, and apparently my uncle. Somewhere I smelled sulfur.

“Kid, how’s tricks?” he said, pumping my hand vigorously, “Jeez, last time I saw you, you were the size of a thimble, hiding in my coattails. Remember that?”

I told him I did and that I had fond memories of his coattails. Then I pumped hands with an old woman named Lady Sheik.

“How’s the grizzled Bolsheviki anyway?” she screeched. I didn’t know who that was, so I pretended it was my Uncle Holden.

“Oh quite stable. He hasn’t killed in months,” I said.

At this, Lady Sheik lapsed into a cackling fit so hysterical I thought she might hop on a broom and take to the skies at any moment. Then I met Cousin Grendel, who was dark and mysterious as he slid a small black envelope into my pant’s pocket and whispered “shhh.” Then the twins Sally and Ally, who kissed me on the cheek. Then the triplets Dupont, Dupont, Dupont. And the butler Vicks. They were all so happy to have their long lost relative Gerard back. We drank. We smoked. We discussed the family business of gambling, narcotics, prostitution, and novel cartoon animation.

“But Gerard, keep this under your hat, kapeesh?”

And I was well liked and fun and was about to spring the intellectual topic of Applecake Mansions, when Cat-eyes appeared in my peripheral, dragging in a new face. The fellow had so many veins popping out of his forehead he looked like a roadmap. He stormed over shaking his French driver’s license claiming to be the real Gerard.

“Get him!”

My true identity now revealed, the family, moved by some unexplainable instinct for blood, erupted into an angry mob not unlike the one in Dracula. My first adversary was that pile of bones, the Lady Sheik, who, brandishing a steel cocktail pick, sprung out of her wheelchair and lanced at my eyeballs like they were two plump olives. Deftly, I splashed my flute of Pol Roger into her eyes, and she fell to the ground howling in pain. Then I dove out of the gazebo and landed on the back of a horse.

“Ha-yah! Ha-yah!” I said, kicking the flanks. The horse lurched into motion. Dupont, Dupont, Dupont tried to wrestle me off the animal but were all trampled easily by my galloping around the gazebo in tight circles. Ha-yah! Ha-yah! I was about to make my great escape, when Vesuvius pitched an unripe orange at my head. It was a good shot, but not good enough. At the last possible second, the horse reared up and punched the orange back with its hoof. The orange whammed into Vesuvius’s stomach and sent him screaming through the air like a human cannonball, right into the gazebo which made a horrible creaking noise before crashing down on him in a cloud of dust.

“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw oranges,” I growled, channeling my inner frontiersman. Then spurring the stallion to an extreme speed, I jumped over Cousin Grendel and galloped off into the violet glow of twilight, laughing like an idiot. Later, however, while I was trotting along the beach in half-light, trying to find my way back to Studio City, I considered the possibility that the gazebo could have actually killed Max Vesuvius. I downgraded the laugh to a chuckle.

V

Come experience the mysteries of sex. Club Sandwich! Arrive at midnight. Dress nicely.
-G. Vesuvius

I read the tiny black letter Cousin Grendel had stuffed into my pant’s pocket in rapt amazement. It was an invitation to one of those notorious Hollywood sex parties sometimes featured on the news. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. As John chauffeured me to the Beverly Hills address that night, he warned me that people who go to orgies were dumb and reckless, but I knew this wasn’t true, because I was going to one, and I would be using condiments.

John pulled up to Club Sandwich! a quarter after midnight. Quickly, I powdered my nose, fluffed up my red beret in the side mirror, and stuffed the Applecake Mansions manuscript into my waistband. I hugged John and told him I’d secure a deal and be back no later than 3:00 the following Thursday.

Club Sandwich! wasn’t much of a club, and if they had a sandwich, there certainly wasn’t a review of it in the Times. Instead, it was a large rustic estate reminiscent of Manson’s Spahn Ranch, with a little wooden sign that rocked gently in the breeze. I stepped through the iron gates and was ambling up the alléed drive, when a black sports car screamed by full of masked revelers. They looked like they were having a blast, until the car swerved off the road, hit a tree stump, did several flips in the air, landed upright, and started driving again. Man, I really should’ve paid more attention in first-year physics.

Soon, the large country chateau was gleaming before me. The massive door had the largest set of knockers I’d ever seen. A woman opened the door to admit me. Make that the second largest set of knockers I’d ever seen. She was wearing an orange robe and introduced herself as Dalmatia Bloom. She led me into the foyer, which was large and marble. She gave me

a coat hanger for my stuff and told me that the party was just through there and that I should relax because this was only sex and not love and that I should take off my beret because it looked silly. I followed Dalmatia down the hall as she pointed out the estate’s amenities.

“There’s the waterfall. That over there is the missile silo. The elephant sanctuary is just down the escalators on your right. And through those big doors is a one-to-one replica of the Taj Mahal.”

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

“We’re getting those put in next week.” Now we entered a large room with big windows and glowing chandeliers. Naked people pranced around in wild gaiety, engaged in the choreographies of passion. They were older than I imagined. Not at all like pictures. A fist clenched in my chest repeatedly. Was that Lady Sheik gyrating on the pole?

I let myself out a side door hoping for some fresh air but found only the choking smells of carbon monoxide. In the center of the yard, a roaring bonfire towered high into the sky, turning the clouds orange. I approached. A man in a plague doctor mask was prodding the blaze with a crude metal rod. I asked him what this was all about.

“Scripts,” said the plague doctor, gesturing to a wheelbarrow at the edge of the fire, “I’ve been paid to burn all these new scripts. Go on, toss one in.”

I went over to the wheelbarrow. Sure enough it was full of movie scripts. I picked one out and read the title: Angry Puppet Killer 2.

“Hey,” I said, “but I really liked this one.” The plague doctor shrugged in a way that said sorry bud.

As I stood in the eerie glow of the fire, salty tears descended my ruddy cheeks like secret agents on the side of a building. In an instant, everything had changed. No longer was Hollywood the virtuous, down-to-earth place you normally think of. It was evil and scary and dark. It was time to go home.

Crestfallen, I made my way back to the entrance. I was shuffling down the alléed drive, when another black sports car screamed by, hit a tree stump, did 72 revolutions in the air, landed in the top of a tree, backflipped, landed upright, and started driving again. Whatever.

Then I was back on the street, sitting on the curb and waiting for a cab to roll by. That’s when I saw her, standing under the lamppost in front of me, smoking a cigarette, in a dark green velvet dress, the love of my life, the waitress of all waitresses. It was Lucy, just standing there, surrounded by a golden nimbus.

I went over very nonchalantly and introduced myself as the hand puppet guy from earlier. She said she remembered.

“Did you have a nice time?” I said.

“No, not really,” she said faintly.

“Me neither. The whole thing was making me yearn for instantaneous death, and not in a good way.”

“Everything just feels so topsy-turvy now,” Lucy said. Her doe-eyes were large and liquid in the moonlight.

“Like your dreams are crushed.” I added. We stayed quiet for some time and listened tothe night. Then Lucy spoke again.

“I guess I’ve always wanted to leave this junk town, go North or South or West. West would be nice. I love California.”

“Aren’t we already in California?” “We’re in Los Angeles.”

“Isn’t that in California?”

“Sort of,” said Lucy.

Now a fancy-looking cab pulled up, a Beverly Hills Taxi. Apparently, Lucy and I both lived in Studio City. We agreed to carpool. In the cab, we talked about acting and Hollywood and dreams. The month before Lucy had played the role of Thomasina Coverly in a production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

“You’re kidding,” I said, “Arcadia is my favorite play.” And I wasn’t lying. Really it was my favorite play, by default, because I’d never seen any other play in my life. Then I told her about John and me and Applecake Mansions.

“What’s it about,” Lucy asked.

“Well,” I started, “it’s hard to explain. But I suppose it’s a movie about life and taking risks and fate.”

“Would you let me read it sometime?” said Lucy. At this point, my heart executed a series of acrobatic maneuvers hitherto seen only at Ringling Brothers.

“Read it?” I said, “Sure. But really I want you to be in it. There’s this part that’s perfect for you. You’d be terrific.”

“You think so?”
“Yes.” I said, “A hundred times yes.”

A smile broke across her lips in the dark, and she was excited when I produced the script from my waistband, but then the cab rolled to a stop. It was Lucy’s apartment. She scribbled her number down on the title page of Applecake Mansions and told me to call her, and then I said, “Wait, don’t move.” I got out of the car and ran around to open her door. As she stepped out, she said that together we’d reinvent Hollywood, and then we said good night, and I walked home.

VI

The next day, I woke on the divan with the sun shining in my eyes, but it was really just John using the metal toaster to reflect light into my face as a prank.

“Good one, John,” I said.

I settled down with coffee and a Danish and began at once to unfurl the night’s exploits, the good and the bad, and how Lucy had given me her number..

“You should give her a call,” John said.

So I went to grab the script with the number. And that’s when I was struck by the five hundred ton realization that I did not have it. John and I turned the house upside down, inside out, and right side left. No Applecake Mansions. Next, we turned the house upside right, left side down, and inside up. Still, no Appelcake Mansions.

We called Beverly Hills Taxi. They answered and said they didn’t have the script, and for the next few hours, Beverly Hills Taxis kept showing up in front of the house, which was very annoying. We called them back. “Please stop sending taxis.” They sent more taxis.

Eventually, I was on the cusp of a thermonuclear meltdown, writhing on the floor, as snatches of the Dutch national anthem came to me as if in a dream. Then the TV was on, and that’s how we got the news.

Apparently, last night, some hot shot actor named Peabody Hancheck was party hopping in Beverly Hills when he discovered Applecake Mansions in the back of a taxi. Like me, Hancheck fell in love with the fantastic plot and asked to be driven to his agent’s house. Shortly thereafter, Hancheck’s agent, Rants Balboney, was summoned to consciousness by the sound of Applecake Mansions—all three hundred pages—crashing through his window. Balboney, who had been waiting for this moment since he was a boy, grabbed the large revolver under his pillow and yelled, “It’s cowboy time baby.” However, cowboy time was stopped when the culprit was revealed to be Hancheck, who, drunk as a tick, was calling up to Balboney’s window á la Romeo and clamoring for the lead role in the picture. By morning, Paramount had signed on for 200 million smackeroos, with Hancheck to star alongside his new squeeze Lucy Allen, whose number came to him as a matter of coincidence.

VII

I suppose a final lesson would be: if you write a great screenplay, always put your name on it—just like they tell you in grade school.

When the movie came out I never did see it. Why? Because I couldn’t afford a ticket. Being the hand sanitizer attendant at Club Sandwich! doesn’t pay much, and lentil prices had gone up.