“Please,” Doctor Menner calls out as he scribbles into his notepad, “settle down, people. You know the rules. No talking out of turn.”
A heavily made-up woman in her late thirties with tease-damaged brown hair and dangly metal earrings yells out of turn: “I’m Madonna.” She points at Clyde. “And I think your hair looks ridiculous.”
Clyde blinks at her. “What?”
Doctor Menner flips shut the notebook and frowns at Madonna. “Was that necessary?”
“You always tell us we should say whatever we feel,” Madonna says.
“What did that slut fucking say to me?” Clyde asks Doctor Menner.
“I think her hair looks great,” the young man across from Clyde says.
“Yeah, you would.” Madonna peers into a compact mirror and touches up her makeup. “I think Jesus wants to get into Marilyn’s panties.” She snaps shut the compact.
“Hang on,” the young man says. “I never claimed I was Jesus. What I said was that his spirit guides me.”
“Oh, my God,” Clyde leaps out of his chair, knocking it over. “You’re all fucking crazy.” He rushes out of the room.
Doctor Menner runs after him and finds him halfway down the hallway at the lift repeatedly pushing the buttons. “Clyde, wait.”
Clyde glares at Doctor Menner, then kicks the lift door and disappears into the emergency exit at the end of the hallway.
Doctor Menner chases after him and sees Clyde speeding down the stairwell, already several floors away.
“Clyde, come back,” he calls, running down the stairs. “Clyde, please.”
Clyde halts and whirls around as Doctor Menner reaches him, streaming sweat and huffapuffing.
“I am never coming back to this madhouse. Do you hear me?” Clyde yells, poking Doctor Menner in the chest. “I’m not crazy, and I’m not going to let you make me crazy.”
“Listen, Clyde,” Doctor Menner says, squeegeeing the sweat off his bald head with his fingers. “If you prefer, we can go back to the hypnosis, to working one-on-one—”
“No,” Clyde screams. “And don’t you ever call me by that other name again. My name is Marilyn, Marilyn Monroe! And I’m going to make sure the whole goddam world knows it.”
Clyde spins around, and a dazed Doctor Menner watches as he sprints the rest of the way down the stairwell and out of the building.
“Where’d she go, Doc?”
Doctor Menner turns around and sees Jesus standing on the landing above him. Letting out a groan, Doctor Menner sits on one of the steps and lowers his head into his hands.
* * *
Clyde steps off an RTD bus at Hollywood and Vine, a dark, intense expression clouding his face. He strolls aimlessly down the crowded pavement, absently swinging his purse and fighting back tears.
He stops in front of a storefront window crammed full of cheap plastic mannequins wearing sexy lingerie and sees the image of Marilyn reflected in the glass. She waves at him and smiles. Clyde nods and dabs at his eyes with a Kleenex, then resumes his stroll, smiling and coyly waving at passers-by who give him wide berth.
Passing an old revival cinema on Hollywood near Wilcox, Clyde abruptly pulls up in front of the marquee and sees a poster announcing The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. He squeals with excitement, quickly fumbles a few bills out of his purse and steps up to the old-style wooden ticket booth. He peers inside and sees a clean-shaven olive-skinned man in his mid-twenties lost in a book.
“One, please,” Clyde says through the grate.
The attendant looks up at Clyde, leans forward, and presses the intercom button. The attendant’s thick black eyebrows set off his intense blue eyes.
“It started a half hour ago,” the young man says.
“Well, then, hurry up and sell me the fucking ticket,” Clyde snaps. He glances at his watch and frowns.
The attendant sets aside his book and narrows his eyes at Clyde, the side of his mouth pulling back into a crooked smile.
“Pretty please,” Clyde says. He blows a kiss at the attendant, who pantomimes catching it in the air and dropping it in his breast pocket. Then he punches out the ticket.
Clyde shimmies into the dark, sparsely occupied cinema, which reeks of piss and stale popcorn, and sits in the very centre, holding his legs tightly together and placing his purse on his lap to avoid touching the sticky threadbare seats. He looks up and watches as the famous “Mustang Scene” plays out on the screen. Clyde follows every one of Marilyn’s expressions with painstaking concentration, quietly miming every line of dialogue with flawless precision. Every so often, the sound of laboured breathing behind him breaks his focus. Whipping around, he sees a skinny, pimply faced man sitting behind him with his black joggers pulled down to his ankles, masturbating over a half-full bucket of popcorn.
“Do you mind taking your cock elsewhere,” Clyde yells. “We’re trying to watch a movie here.”
The man pulls up his joggers and shuffles away.
“Jesus!” Clyde watches the man sit behind another patron and restart his strange courting ritual. “Some people are so rude.”
Turning around, he settles back into watching the film.
As the final credits roll, he dabs a few tears from his eyes and lets out a loud sigh. He glances around the vast, empty auditorium when the house lights come up. A desiccated black usher with a snowy-white afro props open the back doors and shuffles down the aisle half-heartedly, dragging a broom behind him.
Clyde glances at his watch. “Monkey shit!” he screams and dashes out.
“Where are you off to?” someone says as he bursts out of the lobby and speeds past the ticket booth.
Clyde pulls up and sees the attendant from earlier reclining against an outside wall smoking a cigarette and flashing a half-grin at him.
“A casting call maybe?” He blows a series of smoke rings and pumps his eyebrows at Clyde.
“I beg your pardon?” Clyde wrinkles his nose at the sight of the attendant’s hairy arms showing below the sleeves of his dark blue shirt, which are rolled up to right below his elbows.
“Looks like you’re in a hurry. I thought you might be going to a casting call, like half the people in this city.”
Clyde steps up to the young man, waving his hand to disperse the smoke. “I don’t do casting calls anymore.”
“No?”
“Not at my level.” Clyde points at the movie poster in the glass case next to the young man.
The young man glances at the poster, then back at Clyde and arches an eyebrow. “That’s you?”
Clyde nods and strikes a pose next to the poster.
“You’re Marilyn Monroe?”
“In the flesh, baby.”
The young man drops his cigarette to the pavement, crushes it underfoot, and holds his hand out to Clyde. “Nice to meet you, Marilyn. I’m Ralph.”
Clyde looks at Ralph’s hand and back up at him.
“I’m a graduate film student.” Ralph lowers his hand. He takes a step toward Clyde and pumps his eyebrows at him again.
“What about it?”
“Maybe you’d like to get together sometime and talk movies.”
Feeling Ralph a bit too close for comfort, close enough, in fact, to smell the musky-sweet scent of his skin, Clyde blinks at him and stumbles backwards. Checking his watch, he lets out a hoarse little scream, then spins around and dashes down the pavement.
Ralph cocks his head to one side and watches Clyde dash down Hollywood Boulevard, slaloming around the tourists meandering west along the Walk of Fame toward Mann’s Chinese Theatre. When he disappears around the corner at Cahuenga Boulevard, Ralph returns to the ticket booth and shuffles through a stack of Los Angeles Herald-Examiners set aside for recycling. A few minutes later he’s scanning an article reporting the attempted burglary of the Marilyn Monroe / Joe DiMaggio “honeymoon house” in Beverly Hills by a deranged fan, illustrated by a photo of the modest-looking house, a stock photo of Marilyn and DiMaggio in a booth at the Brow
n Derby, and a grainy image of Clyde in the courtroom sitting next to his public defender. Ralph looks up and gazes out at the boulevard for a moment, then folds the newspaper and stuffs it into his book bag.
* * *
Clyde leaps out of a lumbering RTD bus as it pulls up outside the block-size, windowless concrete Pacific Telephone Exchange Building, reaching into his purse at the same time. He pulls out his company ID and sprints past a security guard into the employee entrance.
As he gallops past numerous manned operator bays, his co-workers raise their heads and exchange disapproving glances as he speeds by. Stopping behind a forty-something redhead with a pinched face and black cat-eye glasses, he pulls off her headset.
“Your shift started over a half hour ago.” The redhead stands and straightens her hair. “Where were you?”
Clyde shoves her aside, slips on the headset, and sits at the console. The redhead storms off down the aisle, and Clyde struggles to catch his breath.
“My God!” A Filipina co-worker at the next console hands him a few pieces of tissue paper. “What happened to you?”
Clyde snatches the paper out of her hands and wipes his face, nodding a thank you.
“No, not you, sir,” the co-worker says into her mouthpiece. “I’m sorry.”
“This is the operator,” Clyde says into his mouthpiece, breathing heavily. “How may I help you?”
A few minutes later, Clyde’s supervisor marches up to him, followed by a prim young woman in a pink-and-white summer dress. The heads of several operators pop up over their consoles and watch as the supervisor taps Clyde on the shoulder. Clyde looks up at him.
“One moment, please, ma’am,” Clyde says into the mouthpiece.
The supervisor signals with his forefinger for Clyde to follow him. The young woman in the pink dress slides into the chair as Clyde rises, and she slips on the headset. Clyde follows his supervisor, who is walking several paces ahead, down the aisle.
Clyde’s Filipina co-worker mouths What’s up? to Miss Pink Dress, who responds by drawing her thumb across her throat.
Thirty minutes later Clyde emerges from the building carrying a pink slip and his final pay cheque in his hand. He drags himself to the bus stop and waits for the next bus to Pasadena.
The bus drops him off at Fair Oaks and Washington, and he walks a few blocks home. He halts a moment when he sees his father’s truck parked in the driveway, feeling his heartbeat in his throat, then walks past it and enters the house. Glancing into the living room as he glides by, he sees his parents sitting on the sofa in front of the TV, which is broadcasting a baseball game. His mother is knitting a blanket, and his father is listing to one side, bleary-eyed and drooling, a half-consumed bottle of whiskey on the coffee table in front of him.
Clyde pads quickly down the hallway to his bedroom, which he has converted into a veritable shrine to Marilyn Monroe, filled with photos, memorabilia, trinkets, and a plaster bust of Marilyn atop a candlelit altar. He pushes the door closed, throws himself on his bed, hugging a life-sized Marilyn pillow to his chest, and sobs.
Yoshi sits up and glances around. “What was that?” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and blinks at the TV. Tomoko sets aside her knitting and stands. Yoshi glances at the grandfather clock. “What’s he doing home so early? Why the hell isn’t he at work?”
Tomoko moves to the door.
“It’s a miracle he still has a job.”
“Yoshi, please,” Tomoko says, “Don’t raise your voice so.” She moves down the hall and listens at Clyde’s door for a moment, then knocks softly.
“Go away,” comes Clyde’s muffled voice from the other side.
“I’ll raise my voice in my own house if I want to raise my voice,” Yoshi roars from the living room.
Tomoko knocks again, this time more forcefully.
“Go away,” Clyde screams, “leave me alone.”
Tomoko opens the door, glides to Clyde’s bedside and sits on the edge of his bed. She strokes his back softly, and Clyde sits up and embraces her.
“Please, go away,” Clyde whimpers over his mother’s shoulders.
Tomoko holds him tightly and rocks with him. “What is it, my baby? What’s happened?”
Yoshi staggers up to the partially open door and eavesdrops from the hallway.
“I’m not going back to that stupid therapy group, Momma.”
Tomoko releases Clyde. “What do you mean?” She stares at him, her eyes wide. “You have to go. The judge ordered it. It’s part of your probation.”
Clyde scoots away from her and sits against the wall, pulling up his knees and hugging them. “I don’t care, Momma. Those people were all crazy. They were making fun of me.”
Tomoko frowns and looks over her shoulder at the door, then she turns back to Clyde. “What about work?” she whispers. “Didn’t your shift start already?”
Clyde grabs the remote control from his nightstand and switches on the TV. “I’m not going back there either. I want to rest.”
“That’s it!” Yoshi bursts through the doorway. “I’m sick of all this! I’ve had it!” He strides to the middle of the room. “We’ve all had it with you.”
“Don’t yell at me!” Clyde screams. “Momma, tell him not to—”
Tomoko stands. “Yoshi, please.”
“You keep out of this.” Yoshi shakes an unsteady finger in her face. “You made him like this.” He lurches forward and pulls Tomoko away from Clyde’s bedside.
“Leave my momma alone, you drunken pig.” Clyde leaps from the bed and stands eye-to-eye with Yoshi.
Yoshi slaps Clyde to the ground and kicks him.
“Get out of my room, you mutha fucka!” Clyde screeches.
“Your room?” Yoshi rakes his dirty fingernails along the wall, tearing through a line of Marilyn photos.
“What are you doing?” screams Clyde.
Yoshi attacks a display case filled with Marilyn memorabilia, grabbing armfuls of knickknacks and magazines and throwing them on the floor.
“Stop it! Stop, you pig, you pig!”
Clyde scrambles to his feet, grabbing for the magazines that Yoshi is shredding, and Yoshi kicks him back down while Tomoko blubbers at the door. Yoshi launches himself at the bust of Marilyn. He hefts it off the altar and slams it against the wall. Clyde screams as if mortally wounded. He crawls across the floor trying to salvage the pieces as shattered plaster rains down on him.
Yoshi grabs him by the hair. “Get out of my house, you freak!” He half-pulls, half-drags Clyde out of the room. Teary Tomoko slinks behind boo-hoo-hooing as Yoshi pulls, pushes, and kicks Clyde down the hallway.
“Ahhh! Ow! Let go of me.” Clyde yanks himself away from Yoshi and struggles to his feet. “Momma, call someone, please. Call his fucking PO.”
Yoshi smacks Clyde back to the ground and hauls him by one arm toward the front door.
“Please, Yoshi, don’t…” Tomoko whimpers from a safe distance. “He’s sick. My baby’s sick.”
Clyde breaks loose in the foyer and runs into the living room, accidentally crashing into the coffee table and knocking over the bottle of whisky, spilling its contents on the carpet. He snatches up the bottle and holds it over his head as Yoshi approaches.
“Don’t come one step nearer, you good for shit drunk. I’ll kill you. I swear to the spirits of your parents, I’ll crack open your piece-of-shit head once and for all.”
Yoshi bats the bottle out of Clyde’s hand. It flies across the room and explodes against the wall. Clyde collapses to the whiskey-sodden carpet. Yoshi drags him to the front door and pushes him out of the house on to the front porch. Tomoko tries to follow, but Yoshi yanks her back inside and slams the door. After a moment, the door swings open, and Clyde’s purse comes flying out, hitting him in the head.
Bruised and dazed, Clyde struggles to his feet, steadying himself for a moment against the stucco. He straightens his ripped and tattered blouse and fixes his hair. Then, stepping back from the ho
use, he screams, “I’m a star! Do you hear me? You can’t treat a star like that.”
A few neighbours step outside and assemble on the pavement across the road. Others pull aside their curtains and peer out their windows wagging their heads. Tomoko looks out the front window at Clyde; tears stream down her face as she watches him hobble past the neighbours and down the street toward the bus stop.
* * *
Clyde alights in front of a petrol station on Sunset Boulevard and heads for the ladies’ room, where he washes his face and reapplies his makeup. He covers the bruises and scratches with heavy foundation. Then he carefully pencils in his eyebrows, emphasising the beauty mark on his cheek with the eyebrow pencil. Finally, he digs his favourite cherry-red lipstick out of his purse and draws on his lips. Stepping back to examine the overall look, he sees Marilyn reflected in the mirror. He giggles and waves at her, then, puckering up, he blows a kiss at the mirror.
Sunset Boulevard is throbbing with activity in the sultry air of the late summer evening, and Clyde strolls along it softly humming Judy Garland’s Who Cares. He sashays past a group of grime-covered vagrants of various ages sitting against a wall outside a cheque cashing store and heads toward the door.
“Oooh, wee,” says the largest of the vagrants, “ain’t she a sweet one!”
His friends laugh it up and whistle at Clyde, who ignores them and steps inside. A few minutes later, Clyde exits the store counting a wad of cash.
“Got any for me, sweet thing?” the vagrant says.
“Go fuck yourself,” Clyde snaps.
The vagrant grabs his crotch. “I’d rather fuck you, pumpkin.” He lifts his head at Clyde and winks. The vagrants fall over themselves laughing.
Clyde moves swiftly down the pavement. A block away, he turns into a narrow, poorly illuminated and rubbish-strewn alley and picks his way through the debris, still counting the cash. He trips over a sleeping derelict and falls to the pavement.
“Hey, what’s the big deal?” the grizzled derelict says through his toothless mouth.
Clyde whips around and sees someone who looks like Popeye crawling toward him on his hands and knees, hungrily eyeing the cash.
“Hey!” Popeye points a trembling, dirt-caked finger at Clyde. “Ain’t you some kind of movie star?”
The Death of Baseball Page 29
