Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  The fish guy swam in from the aggregation buoy at night.

  What’s an aggregation buoy?

  It’s this thing. Twenty-two miles. And these guys beat him up. Bad guys.

  Twenty-two miles? Your dying ass. Nobody swims twenty-two miles.

  They do in the English Channel.

  That’s different.

  Why is it different?

  Because it is.

  What?

  Did somebody say something? Oh, yes:

  Soon to be a Major Motion Picture Event!

  This could be big — very big. The talk is big right off the bat. Nobody has the chutzpa to call it huge before the money is in place, but then Willis is very interested in the part on two conditions: 1) that his girlfriend, an unknown but lithesome blonde who can easily dye to black and can work wonders with a modicum of putty to actually render Polynesian perfection, will play the younger woman and 2) Angelina will play the older woman. Oh — and he also needs, I mean stipulates, that 3) the director’s understanding of action/adventure be subject to the sole ruling of his, Willis’s, agent. So far so good. What could be more reasonable? Except that Willis never asked Angelina what she thought — and she thinks Willis is older than her father, which he isn’t, but still, this puts one-up on the line, simmering, threatening to boil over with ugly innuendo, not to mention potential.

  The options get renewed because of the amazing potential and also as a defensive measure to block other interests from bird-dogging what the option holders have paid good money on all rights to. More good news is that nobody balks at the option renewal acceleration clause. We’re talking defense!

  But fallout reaches terminal velocity when the lithesome girlfriend splits for greener pastures when Brian Highlander ends his steamy liaison with Ashley Hetherington. Speculation runs rampant, but that’s incidental to the Willis connection, which, speaking of a little putty, seems, in a word, pathetic. With Brian Highlander available? Get serious.

  Never mind. Not one minute after the second option lapses, new options are dangled before the hottest performing agents and packagers in town. Not to worry. This bait shall make them frenzy. Just you watch.

  So the man becomes the myth, the legend, with the most amazing artistic commitment since...well, we hate to say this, because we’ll get so many letters, but since Vincent Van Gogh. The difference is that Ravid Rackultz is happily married to a fantastic beauty and didn’t cut his ear off. Send your comments to moltencore.com...

  And so it flows.

  An urgent meeting of market professionals, producers, directors and sage associates is called to plan strategy on the Speedos. That is, we need him on the set in his skimpy skivvies without looking prurient or salacious — without triggering the mad lust of LA’s fervent fans. Any ideas? Because leaving the Speedos under wraps, as it were, is leaving huge money on the table.

  Ravid has two ideas: he can stand up from the guest seat and take off his shirt and pants to reveal the Speedos, which is a natural thing to do, and the viewing audience will see.

  The echelon stare in awe and wonder, that such a simple solution may meet the criteria, avoiding the sex-mongering accusations sure to come. But it just won’t work; I mean, really, a man taking his clothes off on camera? Come on — and not just any man, but him?

  Okay! The second idea is that they cut away to actual underwater footage of Ravid in his scuba gear, holding his camera with its strobes and so on. That way the cameraman can zoom in on the wavy tummy and lumpy nethers.

  “Wait a minute... I’ll be wearing a wetsuit...”

  “Yes! That’s it!” Three top tech execs cry out in unison, agreeing while adapting the idea to what happens best in LA: technical excellence. They’ll stage a simulation! “We won’t actually be in the ocean, bubby.”

  And so it comes to pass at hardly over budget, not even a million dollars, which might sound excessive as the raw cash required to put a man-size tank on a sound stage, but when broken down to drawings, engineering, materials, including one-inch tempered glass, construction, the crane, the truck, the lifts and dollies and logistical coordination between the writers union, the construction union, the stage prop union and the stage handlers union, along with legal disclaimers and back-up docs, it’s a steal. Are you kidding me?

  The segment runs seven minutes, cutting into a commercial break that ups the budget another hundred grand or so in lost revenue from said commercial break, but at this point, it’s the commitment that’s going to count. Sure the naysayers are scoffing and scorning the silly shit they’re trying to pull on The Evening Show. They splash so much water on the set that David slips and falls on his ass. He has the wits to make it look like a set up — what a ham, what a natural, what a beauty — but it isn’t a set up, and his hip may be fractured; as if that’s not enough, they short-circuit the audio and go to break for seven more minutes, giving up some freebie public service announcements, after they met their PSA requirement for the ratings period last fucking week!

  But jeez, Louise, did you see the frikkin’ fuckin’ dingdong on that fish guy?

  Bingo! Or, as Executive Producer Sol Silvergold elaborates, “Motherfucking bingo, you doubtful, shit-eating motherfuckers!”

  Mr. Silvergold sounds upset but really is happy. The tirade comes the next day before lunch, when nobody can tell if Solly feels the joy or another coronary coming on. But he’s always in a better mood after eating, especially on Wednesday, when it’s the huge fucking corned beef on rye special with one of those semi-kosher dills bigger than Jimi Hendrix’s dick — bigger than it used to be anyway. Ha! Am I right!

  “Gott! Did you ever eat anything so good? What is it? The mustard? The little bit fat? The bread? What? Did you ever?”

  No, nobody never. And after lunch Solly settles down. It’s predictable: “Fucking motherfuckers. They’re gonna tell Sol Silvergold who or what is not going to be big? Fuck you. Fuck you, motherfuckers. Fucking mumzers.” And he laughs. Solly laughs, which proves that he’s happy and in a good mood and pleased, and everybody else can laugh too.

  “Hey, kid,” he fondly asks Ravid. “You know from mumzers?”

  “Ken, ktsat. Me-ha-mumzerim, megiaa ha-balagan ha-godol.” Yes, a little bit. From the bastards comes the big man.

  “Hey. The kid is French. But I think he knows. Hey, kid. You from southern France, or what? Hey, Jews everywhere now. The fuck. Ha!”

  So the whole wide world laughs — as it murmurs and mumbles snippets and images of fish, fish books, fish calendars and the fish guy — and what Solly said about Jimi Hendrix’s dick even as everyone is thinking about the motherfucking moray eel in the fish guy’s shorts.

  When lunch at Solly’s is done, and it looks like another money gusher coming on, thanks to the fish guy and the best motherfucking management money can buy, Solly says, “Ha! Don’t you worry, kid. You’re gonna be a very rich man. Rich! Wealthy? I don’t know. But rich!” Then he tosses a set of keys in a lazy arc to Ravid and says, “Drive this till you get settled. Don’t take more than a year. Okay, five years. Ha!”

  The car is right out front, presenting the next challenge with its glaring announcement that a waterman has sunk in the mire. The gleaming statement of material excess sitting at the tow-away curb is a flame red Jaguar convertible with matching interior, top down. Ravid’s blush doesn’t match, but not for want of trying. His embarrassment is overwhelming, till Oybek’s gruff whisper in his ear directs the action: “Get in. Look happy. Wave. Smile! Dig it, motherfucker!” This last is not a cliché of the hip set but a basic directive based on continuing survival.

  Ravid’s hesitation doesn’t carry from the curb to Solly’s big window on the thirty-fourth floor. He waves up. Solly waves back down. It’s a deal.

  Well, it’s a goof that tries to be a laugh, and Ravid is more or less comforted by friends assuring him that it’s a toy, a measure of success — and he’s doing extremely well — but it’s not a reflection of who he is or what he values. It’s
merely a mode of expression, the glorious sentiment being victory over simple needs and practicality.

  Which works for most commuters in LA, but Ravid loves a life of simple needs and practicality. And he can’t help but feel that the obtrusively red car is a reflection of values, of who he is and what he wants.

  Here too, a waterman adapts, first in wincing a little less every time he sees the red car, then becoming inured to the brilliant redness, then thinking that it’s a car — a fucking car — your basic transportation, and that’s all.

  The turnaround comes unexpectedly, out of the blue, as it were, in a lightning bolt of insight, understanding and appreciation. Celebrity by this time has become a challenge, then a burden, then a bad feeling of life forsaken in the swarm of fans, with the blinding red car a homing beacon on their hero. Ravid avoids certain routes that will surely expose him to more of the same, routes through thick fan habitat — fans whose loss of personal identity has left them bereft of anything but the stars to look up to. They stop in their tracks to point a finger and utter his name. He qualifies as a sighting.

  One early evening when the radio announces triple fender benders at three exits in a row on just the freeway he needs to get home in less than an hour, he takes the low road, to make it in an hour and a half.

  Somewhere on the fringe of West Hollywood, headed for Santa Monica, he sees a group of young prostitutes in an area thick with sexual traffic. They yell in unison at the likely john in the hundred thousand dollar car, for whom a five hundred dollar blowjob would be a pittance, even with a five hundred dollar tip, maybe. He won’t return their looks, even as low road traffic also slows to a crawl, and soon he’s hardly twenty feet from the lineup of tawdry boys in their short shorts, with their excessive eyeliner and other facial pastes, putties and colors. He quickly dismisses the similarity between this and a busy reef, since both may be garish and colorful, but one is innocent and the other is the lowest form of depravity. Well, one of the lowest, around here.

  He reacts to a soft, furtive boy stepping off the curb to put both hands on the passenger windowsill and say, “You’re the fish guy. Ravid Rockulz.” Ravid looks up casually enough but can’t help a double take — is that rosacea or rouge over Kaposi’s? Well, what difference does it make? Except to the young man. It makes a difference to him. Unless it doesn’t. He says, “I love you. I love your fish. I want to be a fish. I want to be you. God.” And he yells to the other boys, “Hey! It’s the fish guy!”

  So the boys of the evening gather at that corner, chattering like roosting birds at dusk, with their bangles and colors and suggestive flourish — normal looking boys, till they morph in macro mode, leaning into the car. Up close in lingering daylight he sees the grotesque, the abused, the habitat for microbes and skin parasites. These are society’s living dead, but don’t tell them; they’re up and at it, surviving another day. This bunch is hardcore, surviving by no other means than dollars earned quickly as possible. Yet they gather casually, without urgency, without shame. They seem to shed their lascivious postures in appreciation of the fish guy and what he does, where he’s been and how he thinks, as if a fish guy is different from other guys, as if the fish guy knows, sees and feels.

  The most indelible praise of Ravid Rockulz’s showbiz career then careens out of nowhere. A soiled, salacious and obviously disturbed boy whose lipstick is smudged over one cheek, either from recent service or as merchandizing to suggest service available, says, “I got the big one, you know. It’s so huge. I love that. I get off about two or three usually. I mean unless it’s really busy, you know. People don’t realize that we’re like everybody else. I mean, I used to be homeless, but now I have a place, now that I suck cock, you know. Anyhoo, you know, I always like to open my book, your book, when I get home. It makes me feel, you know, so...I can’t really tell you what it makes me feel, but it’s so good.” The boy is twenty, give or take, and could have been stunt double to Leonardo DiCaprio — same wide jaw, same sandy hair swept sideways, same ski nose, same baby blues. Unless... Unless he’s more spot on for Johnny Depp, considering the eyeliner and the method insanity sparkling in his eyes.

  Well, by this time the wayward boys are on the driver’s side too, some touching the fish guy in order to say they did, one caressing his hair, one offering to pay five bills to suck off the fish guy and most of the rest laughing, with a few waiting to see if the offer will be considered. Offering thanks all around with a quick, nervous nod, Ravid peers around the traffic ahead and sees it’s breaking loose and starting to move — even five or ten miles an hour would ease him out of this bind, and so it does. So he says thank you all around once again to reaffirm his gratitude for such great fans, and that’s that, except for the boy who gets home late and feels good, looking at the fish.

  He says, “I love your car. It’s a flame angel, just like you. Please come and see us again. Okay?”

  Ravid waves, and the flow picks up to twenty-five for another half hour, in which a waterman ponders the strange ways of God or Neptune or whomever, at long last approaching an exit free of fender benders and thinking yeah, it’s some crazy fucked up shit all right. But you know, those guys...those guys back there. Man.

  Well, it’s not the sort of fan appreciation that any celebrity wants to share, surely not on a talk show or even with associates, many of whom may have spent a grand or two on that very same route, making them what, any different than the boys?

  But not sharing makes the fan appreciation no less appreciated. How can a sane, stable man reasonably discuss or even consider these boys and what they do in any light but perversion and unfortunate circumstance? He can’t, but a glimmer shines through, in which the very worst of human behaviors — well, they’re bad, anyway — are preempted by something good. Maybe it will stay his little secret, and that’s fine by him; but the fact is that he loves those guys, first of all because of what they had to say, which were probably the nicest things anybody ever said to him, but mostly for their actual appreciation of the work. Those guys — at least one of them actually took himself thousands of miles away to a reef in his mind. That guy sees the light, which is maybe what everyone refers to when they talk about attitude. That guy has it, has to, which is a laugh, considering what else he must have. But the thing is, I always thought attitude was a primary component of the propaganda supporting this sick culture, that attitude is necessary for leadership, and leadership is what’s wrong with the place. Well, these street boys have attitude, and frankly, I think they’re on to something.

  The studio techs help again with street cover, to enhance anonymity, mobility, privacy and a normal life or approximation thereof. A baseball cap, shades and a three-day growth restore the amazing waterman to life among the commuters and consumers. Newly amazed at this place, this dream, this fantasy seeking realization — this LA, he feels many people peering at him and at many others, both the famous and yet-to-be famous, all wearing the three-day growth, baseball cap and shades.

  Is that you?

  In collective anonymity, everybody looks famous, or could be. A few look exactly like characters in movies. Some capture the beauty and loss of souls unbound, seeking a role and reasonable direction. Do you realize the potential here?

  Besides faces in the crowd drawn in comedy and tragedy there are players waiting discovery at street level. The dry cleaner no longer looks like Charlie Chan or speaks of number one son; he animate and crazy as chop-socky original, martinized to modern specs.

  The ice cream guy has scorpions tattooed on his neck and glares on the verge of dénouement, as if this is the meaning you’ve been waiting on. His eyes glow incandescent blue. Sure, it’s contact lenses, supporting a very effective audition, in case you might be, you know...

  Waiters, waitresses, cab drivers, clerks and the whole service army wear their second hats obviously over their first; it’s why they’re here, for a break in showbiz. Until then, they’re part of the kindred spirits in pursuit of artistic expression. “Hey. Yo
u’re the fish guy. Right on, man. You’re terrific.”

  Well, that does feel good — not so profound as the boy hookers giving voice to their passion, but a certain return on effort. Then, it happens: he hears the verbal recognition and turns, against his better judgment, to see that the guy recognized looks amazingly like the fish guy but is not. How could he be? I’m the fish guy. Well, this is disconcerting. I wear a disguise, and for what? So some nebbish can claim the glory?

  This too shall pass, in theory, in the short term, till later that night. Reviewing his work once again, as many artists will, looking for possible improvements or looking again after a long time without looking, to see the work as a first time viewer might see it, Ravid stops on a dazzling plate.

  Normally a shy fish, this flame angel has come forward to mug front and center, and though fish are generally assumed to lack facial expression, this one has his eyebrows bunched in consternation. Behind him, peeking out of a deep recess, showing only her eyes and mouth, is his mate. On a whim and an impulse, he checks the files for an early, fairly mechanical, but technically excellent shot of a flame angel in profile. He prints it out and drives down to the custom car place, where the artistic crew provides an estimate to duplicate the four black stripes on the red Jaguar. Nobody sniggers or questions the strange request, because art is personal and sacrosanct. It’s a private statement of values, perceptions and praise. Ravid takes the formal written estimate of twelve thousand dollars, and on his way home he spends sixty dollars on a medium-grade, four-inch brush and a gallon of black enamel, satin finish.

  It makes no sense to hand-paint a car of this value. Even rationalizing that it’s a car, just a car and only a car. The sheer value of the thing can’t be avoided — though it can be lowered, or raised. It’s a beacon of something or other, a classic design in a demanding color in search of context. The car will highlight its driver as a champion of those values we hold dear, namely vast discretionary income, or enough cash for a no-credit-check car loan, or a keen eye for an OK used car, but even then this short would run fifty or sixty K, so what the fuck? You know what I’m trying to say here?