by Lenox Parker
Was this going to be my magnum opus? A story about my dad’s famous friend? I had to admit, it was pretty compelling and nothing like I’d ever come across before. It was a live story—happening right now—so there was actually some gossip-news appeal to it. News that makes news is always good. After speaking with the man on the plane I realize I just don’t have the gumption to be a Hollywood player. I don’t know if a story like this could ever land in my lap again, though, so I should probably milk it for all I can.
I’ll worry about this when I finish it. I have to head back to New York and get the contract first.
My dad called me shortly after I landed; it was late. I was sitting on the bus in traffic staring at the orange substance smeared on the woman’s leg next to me. I couldn’t tell what it was. Then I peered into the plastic bag between her feet on the floor and there was a giant bag of Cheeto’s, open and halfway empty. I would give my left arm for Cheeto’s right now. All weekend I drank smoothies from the hotel gym and ate nothing else—for no other reason than convenience and cost. In the bridal party, they didn’t let us out of our cage in the suite until after cocktail hour was over and somehow the tray we were supposed to get never quite made it. So I was starving, sleep deprived, shaking from coffee, and anxious to get to the meeting. I realized this was not a good time to be headed to a major meeting; my mind was mush after this weekend and the red-eye flight.
As I stumbled into their gleaming offices, about 20 minutes early for my meeting, I realized I left my laptop on the bus. Or the plane. Or the luggage area. Oh my fucking god. Holy mother of Christ, this is my life, the past two months of work, I am going to die.
Where is it? Bus? Phone number? Bus number? Thieves? Russian mobster identity thieves? Did it fall down the luggage chute? I had it on the plane, I put it in the bag, I can’t even fucking remember. Is it sitting on my seat on the plane—I reached up for my carry-on in the overhead, did I step out into the aisle and exit without my laptop? I can’t fucking remember, holy shit holy shit holy shit.
As I’m having a total mental breakdown in the lobby of the building, my contact walks in the door with a tall coffee in her hand. She gave me a big smile, must have taken one look at me and handed me her coffee. We exchanged pleasantries and she understood my clusterfuck state of affairs from the red-eye. I failed to mention the missing laptop.
I am shaking at this point. Sweating palms, feverish, nausea, I felt like I had a sudden onset of the flu. She asked me how the article was going and I said it was amazing, over the moon about it, yadda yadda yadda. I was totally unfocused on the meeting.
All I had was the first third of the article that I had emailed to her. Her boss walked in, the managing editor, and immediately hugged me.
“I love this piece. I absolutely can’t wait for it. This is going to be big. I mean, this is, this is what I call journalism. You really did some work on this, Jessie.”
No one calls me Jessie. Why would he think that Jessica is Jessie? It’s not common. Did I look like a Jessie? I looked like a fucking train-wreck, so maybe that’s what made him think of Jessie.
“And those interviews—I can’t wait to see the rest,” said my contact, who had held back when we first met. Though I wasn’t sure of her thoughts since she could have been kissing her boss’ ass.
“I’m—uh—thanks—you know, there’s still a lot of work—it’s um—”
“She’s really tired, just flew back on the red-eye—” my contact gracefully excused me. She opened a folder and offered me the contract to sign. I didn’t even know if I should be signing it here or having a lawyer look at it first? Fuck it, it’s just an article, which is lost somewhere.
I signed a signature that looked like the scrawls of a drug addict withdrawing with a pen on paper, but it was done.
The false and temporary sense of relief lasted until I got to the elevator when I realized that the laptop case also contained the interview tapes. And of course I didn’t make a backup.
Holy motherfucking shit.
The elevator doors opened and I ran out and nearly through the revolving door of the building out into the cold morning and screamed “FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
I sat in front of the fountain at a nearby building for I don’t even know how long before I got my shit together enough to make some calls and actually try to make an attempt at finding the laptop. I left messages with people at the bus company and with Continental Airlines, as well as Newark Airport. The best I could do was wait.
I bit off all my nails as I thought about everything that was lost, and the implications of their loss. The worst part about the tapes is that they are labeled H. Kessler. All the more intriguing to anyone who comes across them. Worse than that is the contents of the tapes. There was so much off-the-record banter about Howie, the D.A., potential criminal stuff—admissions of guilt. Raw memories, realizations. Nothing that was supposed to be revealed, no less in an article—and certainly not on tape. Though Mo eventually agreed to be taped, I really pushed him just for my own convenience.
Really convenient when I fucking lose them.
I waited. I got a bag of Cheeto’s at a nearby deli and chomped away hoping my phone would ring with some news.
Nothing. So far, nothing.
Fuck.
Chapter 23
Howard is Writing
The recent turn of events was evidence enough for Howard that he needed to be alone and stop destroying shit around him. When he emerged from his drunken stupor, alone and wallet intact, on the bed of a strange hotel room and fully clothed, he knew something was wrong. He spent the next couple of days in the hotel room trying to figure out what he needed to do in order to get his screenplay off the ground. He scribbled some notes here and there and tried to plot an outline. But he couldn’t get it out of his head that Alan just wasn’t on board with the idea. He couldn’t shake the notion that Frank, his Frank, might have stopped looking up to him. Here’s a guy Howie hadn’t thought about in years, yet one evening in a Chinese restaurant and he’s immediately attached to the dynamic that they shared when they were kids. It wasn’t a healthy dynamic. Howie was addicted to Frank’s adulation.
He decided to call Frank and try to win him back—though he didn’t have any rational reason for doing so because pragmatically he intended on developing a caricature out of Frank for his story—so there was no real need to ingratiate himself to him. Nevertheless, Howard needed a clear head before he could step forward.
Meanwhile he had to find a place to call home for a while. This was a decision only he could make and he had to face it that he just couldn’t stay at Punch’s any longer. He regretted having stayed there for the past several weeks because it reinforced a connection. Howard had his career to look out for, his name and reputation.
I’m laying down here thinking about these guys—these losers—and how pathetic they are. They wait 50 years for me to come back to Brooklyn. And for what? So I can insult them all over dinner. And Frank, like a little puppy-dog, keeps following me. This guy’s the biggest loser of them all.
That was it. That’s the beginning of the story. Howard was going to narrate the play-by-play of the dinner. Mo, Frankie, Punch and Art all showed their colors and the story would emerge from there.
He returned from a visit to Frank’s house in Brooklyn with a car accident and the media on its way to trail him, so he had to move fast to find a home base to work from in order to finish the script. But by the time he parked his car in the hotel garage below, there was a pool of photographers stalking him out and it was unavoidable if he got out of his car—there was only one elevator out of the garage.
Howard backed the car up and left the hotel. He drove right back to Brooklyn. Barrelling down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the stretch from Prospect Park down to Bay Ridge, past Sunset Park, the road was patched and if you drove on it at a constant rate of speed, it sounded like budump-budump budump-budump for miles. He listened to the rhythm as it comforted
him. Visiting Frank in Bay Ridge was one thing—it wasn’t even close to where they grew up and it was a relatively close drive. South on the BQE, roping around the southernmost part of Brooklyn was one of the more beautiful views, under the Verrazano Bridge. He remembered the building of the bridge in the early 1960’s and what a phenomenon it was to see such a massive structure join two geographies—Brooklyn and Staten Island. Like another world. He passed underneath it and continued on the Beltway and exited at Cropsey Avenue, Coney Island. His palms were sweaty. He felt a lump in his throat. At first it looked like a lot had changed—new projects, few kids playing out on the streets, different storefronts, the movie theater’s gone. But at second glance nothing had changed. Still poor, still disconnected. He drove up and down the streets, remarking old landmarks and letting the flood of memories collide with his feelings of resentment, sadness, and anger of his childhood.
The area was immigrant-populated as it was when he was a kid, though there appeared to be markedly more black families. There were few Latin American immigrants there when he was growing up. Now it looked like the neighborhood was entirely Spanish. Into the Brighton Beach area Howard continued and he noted that the signs abruptly turned from Spanish to Cyrillic letters and recognized it as Russian. He’d heard about the influx of Russian immigrants, mainly Jewish, into a concentrated section of the area. Businesses were thriving, markets were bustling, and the restaurants and clubs looked lively.
He parked his car close to the boardwalk and hesitated before he got out. He didn’t want to run the risk of being recognized again—he couldn’t have the press after him: he didn’t have any answers, good or bad, to justify why he was here. He just didn’t want to know himself. He was here and that was it. His mission is to write the script and find a quiet place to stay. It was Monday late afternoon and there was no one around except old, Russian ladies sitting on the benches overlooking the beach. They looked like they were sitting there since 1959, with scarves wrapped over their heads and under their chins, heavy coats, and ruddy cheeks.
He strolled the boardwalk and caught a glimpse of a banner hanging over a large high-rise tower on the beach advertising long- and short-term leases for luxury condos. He walked in and asked to see what’s available.
“I want the higher floors, the highest. You have something on the top floor?” he asked the clerk in the leasing office.
“You vant penthouse? Ve heve one available. You must take it now, before ozer guy comes back viz money. You vant it? You have to take furniture though. Ve aren’t taking it out.”
“I gotta see it first. I’m sure it’s nice but I gotta see what I’m buying first.”
The clerk took him up the elevator to the top floor, walked down a long hallway and opened the double doors to the penthouse.
Though it wasn’t a Sunset Strip penthouse, it was a huge, sunny 2-bedroom apartment with the most ridiculous furnishings he’d ever seen. Over-the-top, rococo, flashy white leather couches with mirrored coffee tables and statues in every corner. It was laughable that this was the model apartment. No wonder they were advertising on the side of the building. Nevertheless, Howard took it for three months. This is home, he thought.
I don’t believe I’m in fucking Brighton Beach again. I don’t feel like I have anywhere else to go. I’m not saddened but I’m not happy. I don’t feel anything quite frankly. I step outside onto the boardwalk and I hear the ocean and the wind together—I don’t know what’s louder but together they block out every other sound. It’s like standing in a vacuum. The air is cold and it makes me want to take giant breaths, or run. What the fuck am I doing here? What the fuck am I doing, period?
At least I know that if I had any questions about loyalty to old friends and those connections, well, that’s all for shit. They never sought me out. I was easy to find, I’m fucking movie star. Never got a letter. Never got a call. Forget a visit. I spend my goddamned life trying to get their attention and show them how talented I am and that I’m not just a thug. I’ve made a whole goddamned career around my talent. Millions and millions of people pay money to see me in movies. I am a fucking industry. My name is on restaurants, cologne, and shoes. Ford made a Kessler edition truck. I’ve been on Saturday Night Live countless times and for two years in the 1980s they had a satirical character modeled after me. I’ve inspired dozens of imitators, some having seen success themselves. But it was because of me. I made the new gangster movie—it’s my genre. No one could have pulled off those characters but me. Writers spend careers making characters for me to play. I’ve sustained the livelihoods of dozens of agents, managers, businesspeople, publicists, stylists, drivers, assistants, hookers, bookies, and actors. Howard Motherfucking Kessler.
And here I am back in Brooklyn after making the trek back east to show my four oldest and best friends who I am and who I grew to be. And the night turns out to be a fucking mess. Weeks at Punch’s house and the guy doesn’t ask me one question about my life in Hollywood. I know at least they’ve seen my films; but who the hell hasn’t? You have to live under a rock not to see them. And they treat me like shit; the way they did in school. I don’t have to put up with it anymore.
“Why do you think they owe you, Howie?” Alan said. “I mean, these are grown men, everyone has their problems. So they weren’t there for you during your tough times in your career. They were there for you as a kid because they were literally there. The world doesn’t revolve around you, Howie, how many times have I told you?”
No one is supporting me. I’m out on my own again. It’s been a long time.
Chapter 24
Alan’s Turning Point
What I heard shocked me. At first I thought that it was just Frank’s small-mindedness and relationship with Howie. Then I heard the others speak about him. I had no idea what a bastard he was to everyone as young kids. He started fights and ran away. He stole girlfriends just to get the negative attention of his friends. He stole everything he got his hands on. He had a drinking problem even as far back as junior high school. He joined the Navy after high school to avoid going to jail. He never actually graduated from high school. He may be gay. He had sex with his cousin. His name is Kesselbacher.
Holy shit.
So of course I couldn’t get her out of my head. I hope she calls me, but I know she won’t. She has to be Punch’s daughter; I suppose I could look him up and find her, and tell her who I am. The whole thing is so awkward. I feel like I’m playing both sides and betraying Howie. It’s really my job to find him a way to make his script work somewhere, somehow. I just don’t believe in it, and I don’t believe in him.
I said to myself years ago when I first started out in the business that I would fail if I stopped believing in the projects I was selling to studios. I didn’t have to like them, I just had to know they would succeed. Otherwise, if I become known as a peddler of shit, the good stuff won’t get recognized. So I owe it to my other clients to keep the shit out of my office.
Granted, I don’t know what kind of shit Howie is writing right now—if he’s even writing. He mentioned something about staying in Brooklyn and leasing a place by the water. I just can’t see this thing happening and I can’t envision looking him in the eye after hearing all the stories about him. These four guys, almost none of whom have been in touch over the years, have the exact same recollections of all the awful attributes of Howard—so it’s not like they colluded to pitch the same story to this journalist.
I can’t figure what her motive is. I have to speak to her.
Chapter 25
Jessica Finishes the Article
I returned to my apartment in Hoboken later that evening and threw the keys on the counter and collapsed on the couch. I walked around the city all day in total disarray. I dragged my bag behind me all the way down to Washington Square Park, where I watched some terrible street artists hustle tourists for change. My cellphone batteries were totally dead. Contemplating the loss of my laptop, I had hoped to find some lesson o
r redeeming blessing. In nine hours of deep thought, I found nothing good could possibly come of it.
Hopeless, I plugged in my phone and went to sleep. I didn’t wake until the following day around noon when the lady who comes to feed the cat opened the door and called for Queenie in her high-pitched voice. Of all the thousands of people I called yesterday to get my laptop, I didn’t call the cat lady to tell her I was home. I didn’t rouse, hoping she wouldn’t notice my suitcase still sitting in the hallway. Sure enough, she didn’t call for me. I heard her play with Queenie for a little while, and then some clanking in the kitchen as she fed her. Just when I thought she was gone, she was shuffling around in the closet where the cat’s litter box was. It seemed to take forever, and now I had to pee. She played with the cat some more. How fucking long could she be here? Didn’t she have other animals to feed? My apartment isn’t that nice.
Finally I heard her bid Queenie goodbye. I lay in bed listening to the banality around me: the super was sweeping (or raking?) the sidewalk out front with heavy, violent brushes; the beeping of a truck backing up; and the faint echo of voices and keys in the hallway coming up the stairs. I felt like I couldn’t go back to any of this without successfully completing this article. And now I had no tools. I had committed to the guys—I couldn’t imagine having taken so much of their time and not writing an article that is amazing and well-received. All of the soul-searching they had done about themselves, their childhoods, their relationships with one another and with Howie—I had to provide some kind of objective, the article, so they could understand their own thoughts and validate the time and consideration they put into the interviews.
Some of the interviews were painful, I could tell. Ringing out the old memories and pushing them to think about the memories that weren’t so gleaming with joy, well, that’s my fault. I kept pushing. I kept urging them to think back about all the times they had together, not just the funny and spectacular times. Not one of the guys could come up with one example off the bat. They had to think about it. Some even had to come back to me days or weeks later with a recollection of something that really disturbed them about Howie.
