“Sure.”
“But…he was gone, so I made some coffee and worked on the book for a while and then walked down here to return a few videos that were overdue, and when I walked into the store, they had this big display for Mr. Woods. Have you seen that thing yet, by the way?”
I told him I’d heard about it.
“Well, it moves, you know, and it’s got a big picture of Mr. Woods and…the little boy. I couldn’t remember his name.”
“Callum Duff.”
“In the movie, I mean.”
“Oh…Jeremy.”
“Right. Of course.”
He seemed lost in thought for a moment, so I said: “And?”
“And…I just stood there, glued to the spot, having the weirdest feeling all of a sudden, because I realized it was him.”
“Realized who was him?”
“Bob, the guy I slept with last night.”
“Was who?”
“Was Callum Duff.”
I squinched up my face at him. I could grasp the concept, wiggly as it was; I just couldn’t pin it to the cardboard. “You mean he looked like him?”
“I think it was him, Cadence. He was just what the grownup would look like.”
“C’mon.”
“Well…”
“Callum lives in Maine,” I said.
“He does?”
“Yeah. For years.”
“Oh.” He looked terribly deflated.
“His parents took him home after we wrapped. Mr. Woods was the only movie he ever made. He came back for the Oscars, and that was it.”
I remembered that long-ago night of nights. Callum onstage with Sigourney Weaver, copresenting some boring technical award, the childish “damn” that tumbled from his lips when he flubbed a big word on the TelePrompTer. The whole world was captivated by the only moment of true spontaneity to arise from an otherwise packaged event. Callum left the stage to thunderous applause, those freckles converging in a blush you could see even on black-and-white TV. The town was his on a platter, but all he wanted was to go back home to Rockport, to see his friends again, to study hard and be a lawyer like his dad. Or so he told the press at the time.
Jeff just wouldn’t let it go. “Maybe he came back.”
“I think I would’ve heard,” I said gently.
“You still know him, you mean?”
“Well, no. Not anymore. But Leonard would’ve told me if he were back.”
“Who’s Leonard?”
“My agent. Leonard Lord.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“He’s Callum’s agent too. Or was. That’s how I got him. During Mr. Woods. I know I must’ve told you this.”
Jeff nodded listlessly, drained of his dream.
“The likeness was that strong, huh?”
“Maybe not,” he said.
“He sounds nice, though. The note was really sweet.”
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. This was the first guy he’d even told me about since Ned’s death. “It makes a great story,” I said feebly. “You should do something with it.”
Our margaritas arrived, so we ordered lunch—grilled chicken sandwich for him, fruit plate for me. To pull him out of his funk, I told him about my new job, leaning heavily on my cute boss to keep it interesting.
“Is this guy married?” Jeff asked.
I shook my head. “Divorced. With a seven-year-old kid. The kid lives in Tarzana with the ex-wife.”
“Mmm.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sounds like he’s ready, that’s all.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “He’s my boss, Jeff.” I could see how much he wanted to build a case for me and Neil, but I wasn’t about to let him. He’s already mythologized my sex life to the point of absurdity. It delights him no end to paint me as some rabid little horndog, humping her way around Tinseltown. I told him once that many little people are offended, much in the way that gay and black people are, by the commonly held notion that they’re oversexed. He wasn’t fazed a bit. He said he’d never considered that an insult and that I shouldn’t, either.
The fact remains: I’m no Jezebel. The last time I had sex with anybody was over five years ago. The guy’s name was Henry something, and he was an old friend of Jeff’s, someone he’d known at UC-Davis, visiting from Kentucky. He was sort of a hippie, skinny and goofy-looking, but nice enough. One afternoon at Jeff’s house, while Jeff was out shopping for dinner, Henry gave me a massage, using cedar oil he carried in an embossed leather case. When his fingers strayed accidentally—and how could they not, on this body?—I responded with a not-so-subtle moan of appreciation. After that we were off and running.
And, yes, penetration was achieved. I know that’s your first question, so let’s just get it out of the way. I’m a dwarf, remember, not a midget, which means that certain parts of me are closer to average size than others. That may be a little hard to picture, but trust me; I wouldn’t lie to you about this. At any rate, poor Henry seemed even more surprised than I was, fretting a lot afterwards about whether he’d taken advantage of me. I assured him he hadn’t, but he was a wreck for the rest of his visit.
The following December he wrote me a long, earnest Christmas card from Bowling Green, apparently to determine whether I’d been permanently traumatized by the experience. He hadn’t told Jeff about it, he said, and swore he never would, as if that would somehow protect my honor. Jeff already knew everything, of course, since I’d spilled the beans as soon as we dropped Henry off at the airport. Ever since then, Jeff has tended to exaggerate my sexual potential the way he exaggerates everything else.
While we’re on the subject: I haven’t had much luck with men my own size. There aren’t a lot of them, in the first place, and the ones I’ve met just haven’t turned me on. Mom tried on several occasions to fix me up with men she met at LPA meetings, but I found them ridiculously macho and unappealing. Some people would say that this apparent inability to eroticize my own kind reflects serious self-loathing on my part. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe I just like big guys. God knows, other women aren’t required to apologize for their taste in men.
For a while in the early eighties I did all right in the sex department. Nice men propositioned me in the weirdest places, and I became a sort of serial slut, though not without occasional misgivings. Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I wondered if they really wanted me, Cadence Roth, or were just being kinky. Then I realized how thoroughly I’d been victimized by the semantics of the larger world. If sex with a little person was kinky by its very definition, I had no choice but to embrace kink when it found me and be damned grateful for its existence. When long legs and big tits worked for other women, why shouldn’t my body work for me? And if the guy laughed with his buddies about it later and never called me again, I would cope with that too, like any other modern woman. It was a question of perception, I decided, and taking control of my own destiny.
These days, the pickings are pretty slim. My sex life revolves largely around Big Ed, an industrial-strength marital aid I bought at The Pleasure Chest last year. This marvelous device and a good Keanu Reeves movie have been known to make my evening while Renee is out on a date. Which, frankly, is one of the reasons I’m worried about her landscape-painting scheme, since it would mean a significant loss of privacy. I could always put a TV in my room, I guess, but Big Ed is about as quiet as a Stealth bomber.
After lunch Jeff insisted we stop by the video store so I could see the new Mr. Woods display, complete with moving arm on the beloved elf. He stared at the figure of Callum for a long time but made no attempt to resurrect his theory. He was still harboring it, though, I could tell.
“Why don’t we rent it?” he said.
I made a face.
“C’mon, why not?”
“Well, for starters, it doesn’t work on me.”
“When was the last time you watched it?”
“Three years ago,” I told him, “w
hen Renee moved in.”
“Well, I haven’t seen it since it came out, and I’d love to see it with you. You can annotate.”
I groaned softly.
“It’s not about…that guy,” he said. “I’m over that.”
I told him it was the movie that bothered me.
“C’mon, then,” he said. “I’ll get you stoned.”
“Jeff.”
“Please…”
Note to the set designer:
Jeff is not overly concerned about his surroundings. The bungalow he rents up the hill from Gloria’s is painted a puky mustard color and is flaking badly. There’s a balding palm in the front yard and a row of ratty hollyhocks along the driveway. On this particular day an abandoned toilet greeted us rudely from the sidewalk, left there for pickup by one of the neighbors. (Angelenos, I figure, must renovate their bathrooms more often than anyone else in the world; you can’t turn a corner in this city without seeing somebody’s no-longer-stylish crapper sitting on the curb.)
Jeff justifies the house by seeing it as something out of Nathanael West, but that won’t cut it for the rest of us. If it weren’t for the wind chimes on the front porch and the rainbow flag serving as a curtain at the bedroom window, you’d think an ax murderer lived there. The inside is even worse: stacks of unread newspapers, dirty clothes everywhere, dozens of anemic houseplants pleading to be released from their misery.
Jeff rolled a joint and made a big pitcher of iced tea before we watched the movie. I hadn’t been high for months, so I got silly fast, giggling uncontrollably as soon as the credits rolled. Jeff shushed me like a librarian, totally consumed by the mission at hand. When Callum made his first appearance on the screen, pedaling his bike home from school, Jeff’s eyes narrowed in rapt concentration.
“What’s the verdict?” I asked.
“Who knows?” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
After that we talked only about my performance or the technical wizardry involved. As expected, I found it utterly impossible to surrender to the film. All it evoked for me was heat and boredom, the pulse of my own dead breath against wet rubber, the needling pinball sounds of the circuitry encasing my head. That heartrending sound track didn’t work on me, either, since I had lived in the core of the fantasy, the emotionless eye of the hurricane. I may be the only person in the world with a good reason not to feel something from that movie.
Toward the end, during the scene when Jeremy and Mr. Woods say goodbye, Jeff knelt before the VCR and froze the frame on a close-up of the boy’s face. I wondered what he was looking for. The color of the eyes? A particular expression? A telltale constellation of freckles? He just sat there, though, saying nothing, bathed in the pearly blue light of the box, his face in dramatic silhouette against Callum’s. I felt almost as if I were intruding.
“Maybe not,” he said finally.
I mourned his loss with a murmur.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Hey.”
“I could’ve sworn.”
“I’m just glad you got laid,” I said.
To do my bit, though, I called Leonard’s office first thing Monday morning. His secretary said he was in a meeting, so I asked her to have him call me “regarding Callum Duff,” knowing damn well he wouldn’t phone back if he thought it was just about me. He didn’t return the call until yesterday, and even then he sounded peeved that I’d managed to command his attention twice in the same month. I said I hated to bother him, but a friend of mine thought he’d seen Callum in town, and I’d appreciate his phone number if it was available.
Leonard said he had no such number. He hadn’t represented Callum for years, and as far as he knew, Callum was still attending “some college back East.”
I haven’t had the heart to tell Jeff.
5
IT’S LATE, BUT I OWE YOU AN ENTRY.
I’ve been working like a madwoman for PortaParty, sometimes with as many as two gigs a day. Word of mouth has done wonders for us in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, where we’ve been passed around like a favorite recipe from one rich doctor’s family to another. Some of the kids are so used to us now that they know me by name and have begun to get adventurous when I call for requests during the singing portion of the show. Last week at a dermatologist’s house, an eight-year-old girl made such an eloquent plea for “Like a Virgin” that I finally gave in and sang it sotto voce while the grownups were out at the cabana drinking decaf. I don’t need to tell you I brought down the garage.
The attention is nice, I admit, but I’m a little disturbed by the vaguely captive feeling this specialized audience gives me. Every time I perform, I feel less like a gypsy trouper and more like a court jester. I haven’t said this to Neil, of course, since he’s ecstatic about the new surge in business and attributes it largely to me, which—let’s be honest—is probably true. If nothing else, I’m a novelty, so it’s easy enough to imagine the scenario: “Can I, Mommy, please, please? Zachary had the midget lady for his birthday.”
My secret fantasy is that one day we’ll do a party for the children of, say, the Spellings or the Spielbergs, in the process of which Aaron or Steven, or their wives, or at least someone who works for them, will discover the huge talent I’m hiding under this walking bushel and offer me a contract on the spot.
Farfetched? Maybe. But a girl can dream. We’re working the right neighborhoods, certainly, and we’re bound to run out of doctors sooner or later.
Renee and I drove into Hollywood today to see The Rocketeer at the El Capitan. I was less curious about the movie than about the movie house, a huge Deco extravaganza that Disney just renovated as its flagship theater, whatever that means. They had a live show before the film, with tap-dancing ushers and usherettes in snappy uniforms singing a hopelessly hokey song about the El Capitan and those fabulous stars of yesteryear. Renee adored it. To me, the kids looked like animatronics figures, robots from a ride at Disneyland, with smiles so grim and waxen that they might have been greeting you at the gates of hell.
The Rocketeer hasn’t got much for grownups, but the audience today seemed to enjoy itself thoroughly, stomping and hooting like goons. The biggest cheer came when a gangster took a stand against the Nazis and said, “I may run a crooked business, but I’m a loyal American.”
Yellow ribbon fever is rampant. You can’t make it a block along the Walk of Fame without running into some asshole in a General Schwartzcoff T-shirt. (No, I don’t know how to spell it, and I don’t plan to learn. As far as I’m concerned, he’s just one more Mattel action doll we’ve been sold for the summer.) Even the hookers—I swear to you—are wearing Desert Storm camouflage tube tops. Whores for Oil. Bimbos Against Baghdad. It’s too surreal for words.
A billboard has just gone up in West Hollywood depicting a sleek and sinister-looking car (I forget which make), headlined by one word: STEALTH. How’s that for subtle? The people who buy this car should be issued license plate holders that say MY OTHER CAR IS A BOMBER. Look at what has happened to us: warfare has become so attractive again we can actually sell cars with it—to guzzle the gas we killed all those people for.
After the movie we went to Book City, this huge old Hollywood bookstore with floor-to-ceiling shelves. I like it because there’s always lots of stuff at eye level and because I can lose myself so thoroughly in its maze. Renee gets bored easily with this routine, so she usually runs out for a milk shake while I’m there. At least that’s what she tells me. I think she’s really checking out the panties at Frederick’s of Hollywood. She has a terrible weakness for them. All I want out of Frederick’s is a spot on the sidewalk in front, the perfect location for my star.
I found a copy of Rumpelstiltskin at Book City. I’ve been looking for a good one for ages, since it would make a fabulous movie and I’d be just right to play him. I wouldn’t mind cross-dressing one more time, as long as my face remained visible. In this new version of the fable, which I read tonight while I drank my Cher shake, Rumpelstiltskin is delicately descr
ibed as “a little man” rather than an evil dwarf. Such liberal revisionism is progress only if one prefers complete invisibility to outright scorn. I’m not sure I do.
The legend was pretty much as I’d remembered it, with the poor dude getting his usual bum rap. When he’s banished at the end, having stomped himself completely into the ground, his only crime has been to establish an adoption contract and attempt to abide by its terms. The real villain of the piece, if you ask me, is that venal bitch of a miller’s daughter. Following the dwarf’s instructions, she spun whole rooms full of gold for the king, eventually luring him into marriage, knowing from the start that the fee for Rumpelstiltskin’s services was her firstborn child. Then she has the gall to act wronged when he comes around to collect. No wonder he sends her out to learn his name; she’s treated him like a complete cipher, someone whose feelings count for nothing. The book doesn’t say that, of course, but it does let you know that little guy couldn’t be bought off for all the gold in the kingdom. He valued human life above all else, which was why he wanted a child of his own so badly.
Call me a nut, but I think there’s a real story inside the fairy tale, which would make for a fascinating movie: a crusty, cantankerous but entirely human old dwarf, living on his own in the woods and longing for single parenthood.
When I explained all this to Renee, she said: “Yeah, but most people are used to the old story.”
I told her this was the old story, just another way of looking at it.
“Yeah, but, you know…it’s no fun if he isn’t…”
“A turd.”
She giggled.
“It’s not funny,” I told her sternly. “Dwarfs are always the bad guys in these things—vicious, vindictive little bastards who live under a bridge and eat children for lunch.”