by Lee Goldberg
"Are you fucking brain dead or just an asshole?" Buck let his eyes bore into him.
Obviously, Buck had no place to go to, and no one waiting for him, and was too proud a man to admit he was lonely or afraid. Marty knew that, but his compassion couldn't seem to get past his innate dislike of the man. Why couldn't Marty admit to himself that he was overjoyed that Buck was alive? That he was thankful he wouldn't have to make the journey alone?
"An asshole," Marty conceded.
Buck just grunted, not the least bit mollified by Marty's admission.
"Here's my plan," Marty said. "We'll head south until we're away from the worst of the flood damage, then work our way back northwest and take the Sepulveda Pass into the valley."
Buck was still glaring at him. "What if you need some help lifting your house off your wife, did you think of that?"
"No, I didn't."
"Which means you're brain dead and an asshole." Buck walked off towards the stairwell.
Marty figured he deserved that. He put on the leather work gloves he stole from the grip truck, adjusted a dust mask over his nose and mouth, slipped his bulging gym bag on his back, and followed Buck into the stairwell.
* * * * *
8:04 a.m. Wednesday
The repulsive stench of decay in the stairwell was unbearable, but it was a rose garden compared to the street, which they could smell even as they wriggled down the fire hose from the first floor.
Bodies, and pieces of bodies, were strewn everywhere. Not just men, women and children either, but dogs, cats, horses, even birds. The corpses were all enmeshed in mountainous, decomposing tangles of rotting food, electric wires, slabs of concrete, clothing, motorcycles, and bus benches, among all the other things, large and small, that make up a city.
Marty and Buck had to wade, and climb, and crawl over it all, while trying not to see, breathe, or touch any of it out of the natural fear that death was contagious.
The two men weren't alone on the streets. There were survivors rooting through the wreckage, desperately searching for lost loved ones, and the rescue workers helping them pick through the rubble, sharing their senseless hope for a miracle.
But Marty didn't look at those people. He concentrated on just moving forward, distracting himself from the overpowering smell and the grotesque mosaic of violent death by thinking of Beth, of the life he was returning to, the life they had before their world changed.
* * * * *
"I know it doesn't make any sense. We're both married, and we both love our spouses. But you can't deny there's something powerful between us." Beth stood in front of him and took a step closer, moving into those few inches of space between two people reserved for lovers.
"I can," Marty read the words in the script, he didn't try acting them. He didn't know how. It was one of the many reasons he felt awkward helping Beth rehearse.
"Bullshit," Beth said. "Look into my eyes and tell me you don't want to kiss me."
"I don't want to kiss you."
She took another step closer. "Tell me you don't want to hold me."
"I don't want to hold you."
She came even closer, their bodies nearly touching. "Then what do you want?"
Marty looked down at the pages in his hand, embarrassed that it was shaking, and read aloud: "Logan suddenly grabs her shirt and rips it open, buttons flying, and buries his face hungrily between her breasts in a lust-driven frenzy."
"Do it," she said huskily, staying in character.
"What?"
"Do it."
He dropped the script on the floor, grabbed the front of her shirt, and tried to rip it open, but the damn buttons wouldn't tear off. He yanked again. And again. Beth began to laugh, and so did Marty.
"What did you do," Marty asked, grinning, "weld these buttons on?"
"Weakling," she teased.
"Okay, Wonder Woman, you try it."
Beth pushed his hands away and tried to rip open her shirt herself. The buttons wouldn't tear for her either, which only made it funnier. Neither one of them could stop laughing.
"Maybe if I undid a couple buttons," she untucked her blouse and opened a few buttons at the top, revealing a hint of cleavage. "Try again."
Marty slipped his fingers between the buttons, made sure he was holding tight, and pulled as hard as he could. One, lousy button came off, the others held fast. The two of them erupted into laughter again, leaning against one another in a clumsy embrace.
"I bet Lorenzo Lamas isn't going to have a problem doing it," she said.
"Fuck him." Marty replied.
"I will," Beth smiled mischievously.
"Oh yeah?" Marty grabbed her by the front of her blouse and yanked, ripping it wide open. She drew his face to her breasts and kissed the top of his head, running her fingers through his hair.
"You're just like an actor, Marty. All you need is the right motivation."
CHAPTER TEN
Getting to Know You
10:20 a.m. Wednesday
Marty's feet were killing him. He'd been walking on blisters all morning, and it was only getting worse. It was hard enough working his way through rubble, but now slogging through the muck, each step was like pulling his feet out of a bucket of moist chewing gum.
Marty and Buck had worked their way south down Vine to Melrose Avenue, where the flood seemed to have lost most of its destructive force, and were taking the street west towards Beverly Hills. Melrose Avenue was a literal dividing line between poverty and wealth, the grime of Hollywood and the grace of Hancock Park. The north side of Melrose was lined with run-down apartments, car repair garages, pawn shops, and a Ralph's Supermarket that was surrounded by a white, wrought-iron fence and guarded by armed security personnel. Across the street, estate homes and elegant condominiums abutted the tip of the exclusive Wilshire Country Club Golf Course, hiding the perfect green grass from passing cars.
Those class differences were irrelevant now. Both sides of the street here were in ruins, the rich and the poor, identically swathed in blood and despair, huddled miserably together on the streets, the front lawns, and the parking lots, tending their wounds and waiting for the ground to stop shaking.
Over the last hour, several small aftershocks rippled through the ground, reminding Marty and everyone else the earth wasn't finished with them yet, widening cracks, toppling lopsided homes and slanted buildings, breaking what little glass hadn't broken yet.
It had been over twenty-four hours since the Big One, and in that time, Marty didn't feel he'd gone very far in distance and yet, at the same time, knew he'd traveled a long way from where he'd been before. It wasn't only his reflection in the shattered mirror that made him think that.
For one thing, Marty realized he was a stronger, more capable man than he ever thought he was. He'd rescued a child, survived a flood, and waded through an unspeakable landscape of death. He never would have imagined he could do one of those things, let alone all three. And, at the same time, Marty was ashamed to find depths of weakness and cowardice within himself he never suspected were there. He did nothing for Molly, leaving her to die, and would have done the same for Franklin, if Buck hadn't forced him into pulling off a rescue. Somehow, the cowardice wasn't nearly as unexpected as the heroism and endurance.
As much as Marty disliked Buck, he couldn't deny that somehow this one-dimensional TV character, this caveman in a polyester suit, had brought out the best in him even while trying to get him killed. Yet all Marty knew about Buck was that he was a bounty hunter, drove a Mercury Montego, lived alone with a pit-bull named Thor, decorated his bathroom with cocktail napkins, and disliked women with slanty breasts.
"Tell me something, Buck. Who are you?"
The question didn't throw Buck at all, he answered immediately, without hesitation: "Two hundred and twenty pounds of exquisite manhood, loved and worshipped by women, feared and respected by men, my towering intellect matched only by my gigantic cock. One look at me will tell you all of that."
"What do you ge
t if you dig deeper?"
"You get to experience it, which is different for women than it is for men." Obviously, Buck had given this some thought. Perhaps now Marty would actually learn something.
"For a woman, it means no bullshit," Buck explained. "I give them exactly what they want, what a man was put here to give them: good food, a solid fuck, and protection from harm. Until I get bored and find myself another woman. But I don't give them any bullshit. When I'm done with a woman, she knows it and I walk away. They respect that, even if it hurts, which is why any woman I've left will always take me back to bed again. That, and the fact I've got a huge dick.
"Now for a guy, it depends whether you're friend or foe. To a friend, I'm a fellow warrior, someone you know will fight alongside you to the death. A brother in blood, through heaven or hell. What's mine is yours, and that includes my woman. To a foe, I'm pure, primal terror. I'm the big, dark, merciless motherfucker from hell who will catch you, slit you wide open, and feast on your steaming guts."
"Steaming guts." Marty shook his head.
"That's what I said."
"That's not a description of a real person, that's a comic book character."
"I'm standing here, aren't I?"
"That's not who you are, what you just told me is an idiotic soldier-of-fortune fantasy shared by legions of minimum wage, illiterate rednecks who regret being born too late to fight in Vietnam and think Chuck Norris is a terrific actor. It's not who you are."
"What the fuck do you know? You're some professional bullshit artist who spends his days watching other bullshit artists pretend to be other fucking people living other fucking lives, and you think you can tell them how to do it better because you're so goddamn good at living a fantasy yourself."
"Is that how you see me?"
"Isn't that how you see yourself?"
As a matter of fact, it was. "No," Marty replied.
Buck shrugged. "Okay, then who the fuck are you?"
"I'm just an average guy."
"That's it?"
"I left out the part about having a gigantic cock and eating my enemy's steaming guts, but other than that, yeah, that's it."
"How would you know if you're an average guy? What the hell is that? It's meaningless bullshit. C'mon, who the fuck are you?"
"I'm a writer. I'm a husband. I'm a decent man."
"Uh-huh," Buck was silent for a moment, mulling something over as they walked. "So, what have you written?"
Marty looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. "Some scripts, some novels."
"Any of 'em shot or published?"
"Not yet."
"Then you aren't a fucking writer," Buck said. "So, how's your marriage?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean does your wife love you? Is she happy? Is she getting what she wants out of life by being with you? Are you fulfilling all your requirements as a man?"
Marty thought about his conversation with Beth in the kitchen yesterday morning. He thought about his infertility. He thought about the awkwardness, the buried resentments, and the pain. "It's not that easy. You can love someone and still have times where—"
"You're a lousy husband," Buck interrupted. "Let's move on to the decency part. What was your first instinct when that black kid on the overpass needed help?"
Marty didn't answer.
"So you're not a writer, not a husband, and not a decent guy," Buck said. "We're back where we started, aren't we, Marty? Who the fuck are you? You obviously aren't the guy you think you are. So, you tell me which one of us is full of shit."
Buck was right. If Marty expected an honest answer from Buck, he had to give one himself.
"Okay, Buck. Fair enough. I'll start again. I'm an average guy in that I have dreams that aren't fulfilled, a marriage that isn't perfect, and am often more of a disappointment to myself than I am to others. I'm not completely loyal or honest and I don't pretend to be the perfect friend or lover. I can be selfish, manipulative, and cruel, just like everybody else. But like most guys, I try to rise above my shortcomings, or at least convince myself that I do, so that most days I can think of myself as a decent person."
"Holy shit," Buck said. "That's good."
Marty gave him a nod. "Your turn."
Buck took a deep breath, thought for a moment, then said: "Maybe I'm a bounty hunter, and spend all my time chasing people, because I'm on the run myself. Afraid of commitment, love, actually investing myself in anything. It's why I come across so big and mean, so people will be scared off and I won't have to deal with them on any sort of emotional level. Bottom line, I'm terrified of intimacy."
Marty looked at Buck, truly astonished. There was a human being somewhere inside Buck after all, and a surprisingly perceptive one at that.
"You like it?" Buck asked.
"I may have misjudged you, Buck."
"Now all the things I've done that piss you off don't seem quite so bad, maybe even redeemable."
Redeemable? Since when did Buck use words like that?
"You see a side of me that's thoughtful, sensitive, what you might call likeable," Buck said. "Am I right?"
Marty stopped walking. Redeemable? Likeable? Buck wasn't talking about himself. He was talking about a character.
"Everything you just said about yourself was pure bullshit, wasn't it?" Marty said. "You don't believe a word of it."
"Why do I have to believe that whiny, self-serving horseshit if you buy it and it works for the character?"
"What character?"
"My character, asshole. The hero of the fucking series. By the way, you were right, you do give great notes."
"What are you talking about?"
"That speech you just made, the 'I'm an average guy' thing, fucking brilliant. The way you gave yourself notes on yourself, that was inspiring shit. I saw right then what you were looking for, so I reworked everything."
"Reworked what?"
"The character, the whole fucking series. I made it richer, right off the top of my head."
This is unreal, Marty thought. The hands-down winner for the nightmare pitch of all time. "Why does every conversation we have always end up being about you and a TV series? I'm not interested in doing a show about you. I never was and I never will be. Got it? Comprendo? Can we fucking move on?"
"You asked me, remember? You're the one who started the fucking conversation."
"I didn't ask you to pitch me a series about yourself."
"Then what were you asking me about?"
"You, Buck. I wanted to know about you."
"Why the fuck would you want to know that?"
"You're right," Marty replied. "My mistake."
Marty was about to start walking again when he saw a man in a white chef's apron sweeping broken glass and stucco outside a small, ivy-covered restaurant, the vines all that was holding the building together.
"Oh, shit," Marty whispered.
Buck followed his gaze. "What?"
"That's Jean-Marc Lofficier, the famous chef. He owns La Guerre, the restaurant over there. I can't believe I nearly walked right by it."
"You hungry already?"
"No. I can't let him see me like this. Let's go south one block, we can come back to Melrose later."
Buck stared at Marty, incredulous. "You're afraid of a cook? What's he gonna do, char your fucking cheeseburger?"
"You don't understand. That is one of the top five power restaurants in this city. It's where everybody at Paramount does lunch. If Jean-Marc sees me like this, I may never get a table there again."
"So fuck him, eat somewhere else. Look, there's a spaghetti place across the street."
"Someday, Buck, this mess is going to be cleaned up and we're all going to have to go back to work. As stupid as it sounds, in my business where you eat and where you sit when you eat is important. If Jean-Marc sees me like this, looking like I pissed my pants and swam through a cesspool, that's all he'll ever see anytime he hears my name. I'll never get a reservation. And if I can't
get a table at La Guerre, I can't do business."
Buck looked back at Lofficier, who was bending over to hold his dustpan as he swept the trash into it.
"No problem," Buck said. "I'll introduce his face to my knee a few times and we can move on."
Marty grabbed Buck just as the bounty hunter was starting towards the chef. "I appreciate the offer, but I don't think a beating is necessary."
"If the guy is lying on the ground, choking on his teeth, he won't notice you walking by. Even if he does see you, so what? He'll look as bad as you, maybe worse."
"Let's just go down one street."
Buck reluctantly followed Marty into the fashionable, residential neighborhood south of Melrose.
"Philosophically," Buck said, "I've got a big fucking problem running from anybody."
"You're not, I am. And it's not exactly running. It's avoiding."
"I got a big fucking problem avoiding anybody."
They were walking past the entry-level residences of moneyed Hancock Park when Marty began to wonder if this was such a wise move. The houses on the tree-lined, leafy street were miniaturized versions of the grandiose estates several blocks south. These were homes for the almost-millionaires, the ones with teething kids, leased German cars, and nightmares about turning forty. This was where a lot of studio executives, producers, and directors lived.
What if one of them saw him? Every time he gave them a note, they would remember how he smelled today and snicker maliciously.
So Marty kept his eyes on the ground, just in case someone he knew was among the people seeking shelter in their Ranger Rovers or gathered on their perfectly manicured lawns with their requisite golden retrievers, eating lunch out of Laura Ashley picnic baskets they bought for evening concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.
Thinking of the Bowl reminded Marty that he did know someone who lived here, a friend in fact. He looked up in time to realize that, as fate would have it, he was just a few doors away from writer/producer Josh Redden's place.
Josh lived on McCadden in one of those little Spanish houses with the red tile roofs and white plaster walls. Marty had been there two years ago for party celebrating the second season premiere of Manchine. A short time after that, Marty and Beth were invited to the Hollywood Bowl with Josh and his wife, who had a box there. They sat through a couple hours of classical music, dining on Wolfgang Puck frozen pizzas and airplane wine.
