by Owen Thomas
In fact, judging from their expressions, none of the family appears to have any reserve of affection for the photographer. They glower at me from the walls, issuing the same mocking challenge as the bulldog that stands directly before me: just what kind of a man are you, anyway?
“I’ll tell you right off the bat, Mr. Johns,” Principal Bob is telling me, “I don’t want to hear your explanation.”
His voice still carries a vestigial accent from his bulldog days. Surely a very long time ago, but I would bet a whole lot of money that the alumni office has his number on the fund-raising, reunion organizing speed dial.
He is fifty-eight if he is a day, broad-shouldered, imposingly tall, tan and reasonably fit for his age and size. I cannot look at Principal Bob without an unwelcome barrage of collegiate football imagery. Somewhere in a box of photos there is an x-ray of a torn anterior cruciate ligament or maybe a fractured rotator cuff; I can feel it. Then came the unfulfilling years as an assistant coach, followed by a return to academia for a teaching certificate, probably at his old alma mater, followed by a series of high school teaching gigs, probably physical education or maybe general science. Then he crossed over. A union contact, maybe a fellow bulldog connection. He became an administrator. An educational bureaucrat, moving from one position to another, elementary, middle, high school, one district to another, one state to another until he and his little plastic bulldog land here: Bertrand J. Wilson High School.
Principal Bob repeats himself slowly for added emphasis. “I do not want to hear your explanation.” He sports a Ken Doll, black shoe polish helmet of hair that spirals out a good inch and a half beyond his forehead, like he is speaking to me from beneath the shelter of a black palm frond.
I find it odd for Principal Bob to start a conversation by telling me that he does not want to hear my explanation, presuming as it does that I have done something that needs explaining. True, I have forgotten to turn in the security affidavit. Neglected may be a better word. But it is, after all, just a stupid form; something to keep on file so that if I turn out to be a terrorist and blow up the school they can prosecute me for misrepresentation. But I will indulge the administration because that is the path of least resistance and because now the indulgence of all things administrative is essential if I am to have any hope of staying off the No-Fly List.
“Mr. Robertson, I …”
“Bob.”
“Sorry. Bob. I’ve signed the paper, I just forgot it at home and I …”
“Mr. Johns,” Principal Bob holds up a hand like I’m a reckless motorist and his large mahogany desk a school crossing entrusted to his care. “I said I do not want to hear your explanation, and I meant it. I called you in … wait a minute.” The crossing guard is now pointing at me. “What paper? What are you talking about? You signed what?”
I almost laugh at his demand that I explain what he has insisted that I not explain. But while I am forgetful in matters of bureaucratic procedure, I am not stupid.
“The security affidavit. I signed it, but forgot to bring it in. I’ll bring...”
“I don’t care about the damn security form, Mr. Johns. Well, I do care about the security form,” and here he smiles a little in a toothy, lopsided, just between us fishing buddies sort of way, “but that is not why you are here.”
“Oh. Why am I here?”
“You are here, Mr. Johns …”
“Please, Bob, call me Dave.”
“You are here, Mr. Johns, because of Brittany Kline.”
“Ah nuts.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Mr. Johns.”
“No, wait. Bob. Bob. Just listen. I …”
“Mr. Johns, I meant what I said and I will not hesitate to fire you on the spot. I DO NOT want to hear it.”
“Can I ask why you don’t want to hear it?”
“Because it is not my job to investigate this particular matter and I do not want to corrupt the process.”
“What particular matter? What process?”
“Brittany Kline is a student of yours, yes?”
“Yes. Third period.”
“She has been missing for the past two days.”
“Missing? Kids skip class all the time, Bob. It’s not like …”
“Missing from home, Mr. Johns. Missing from home.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh. And I must say that there is great concern by this administration,” he flinches not at all in referring to himself as an administration, “that you, her teacher Mr. Johns, her teacher, were among the last people to see her at, of all places, a night club called …” Principal Bob pulls his beefy finger down the middle of a page of hand-written notes. “Oh yes, a place called Billy Rocks?”
“Bob, I …”
“My warning to you stands, Mr. Johns. I will follow protocol even if it means ending your employment before you leave this office. Understand?”
I sigh exasperatedly and cross my arms to show my irritation, but Principal Bob is as unmoved as I had been at the same display by little Kashawnda Davis just an hour earlier over the ethnicity of our Lord and Savior.
“Good. Now, I have no doubt that this is all very distressing to you and that you are horribly misunderstood and that you have a good explanation and that Miss Kline will soon turn up at her boyfriend’s house or some such place and that this will all come out in the wash, as they say. But we are going to do this by the numbers. Okay?”
I shrug at him with as much insolence as I can muster. I feel like I am twelve.
“Good. My first step is to suspend you immediately – with pay, with pay, don’t worry about that – pending an investigation.”
“What? An investigation by whom?”
“The Columbus Police Department.”
“The police?! Bob! The police?! This is insane.”
“Once the police have done whatever it is that they intend to do – which is, I assume, to simply ask you some questions – then the school district will want to conduct its own inquiry.”
“An inquiry into what? For what purpose, Bob?” I have abandoned all effort to keep the anger out of my voice and my tone respectful. I have just spit the man’s name back at him.
“For the purpose of determining whether you have violated any district rules pertaining to teachers and whether you have engaged in any sanctionable behavior.”
“Sanctionable … Jesus Christ. So are you saying I need to hire a lawyer, Bob?”
“I dunno, Mr. Johns. You seem to be on pretty casual terms with Jesus Christ. Maybe you should start with him.” The lopsided smile is back and I realize that he is actually enjoying the sarcastic sparring. “I can’t advise you whether to get a lawyer. Personally, I’ve never met a lawyer that’s worth a damn and on a teacher’s salary I’d save my money and cooperate. But that’s up to you, of course. I have taken the step of giving a heads up to your union rep though, so I’m sure he’ll be waiting by the phone.”
“Have you talked to Shepp? Has anyone talked to Shepp?”
“You are referring to Mr. Shepherd?”
“Yes, yes. Mr. Shepherd!”
“I am not at liberty to discuss beyond what I have already mentioned. I’m sure that’s frustrating Mr. Johns, but I do not make the rules.”
“So I’m suspended.”
“Yes. You are suspended.”
“As of right now.”
“As of right now. Do not return to school property unless and until notified.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes, Mr. Johns. My control is limited in this matter.”
“Bob …”
Words fail me and I slump back into my chair staring through him at the red felt banners and pennants behind his desk. – GO GEORGIA! – GET ‘EM BULLDOGS!
“Yes, Mr. Johns?”
“I’ve got classes. I’m just getting the kids lined out.”
“We’ll cover.”
“You’ll cover? With who?”
“Subs.”
&
nbsp; “Great. Just great. You know how much the substitute pool knows about American history?”
“We’ve got great new textbooks. It’ll be fine.”
“Great new …” but, I am incapable of considering the quality of the new textbooks, let alone comprehending Principal Bob’s apparent high estimation of them, while I am already thrashing around in a black sea of nonsense. “What about the rest of the day? You don’t want me to finish up the day?”
“No. I want you to go home, or at least leave the school property. Where you go from here is not my concern. I’ll take over the rest of your classes for today.”
“You?!”
“I taught history at the college level for seventeen years, Mr. Johns. That’s almost longer than you’ve been an adult. I think I’ll manage. Isn’t that right, Bully?”
Principal Bob taps his plastic mascot on the snout. The eyes light up. The head bobbles. Bully emphatically agrees.
CHAPTER 14 – Tilly
I have always found it odd that when I think of Africa, I think of Angus. Those thoughts are fondly associated. I find this peculiar because I did not much like Angus Mann in Africa. At least, at the time, I did not experience feelings of affection for him. It was not until we returned to Los Angeles that I really came to know him.
Perhaps I have always had affection for him and perhaps in those very early days in Mombasa and in Tozeur, I just did not recognize my own feelings for what they were. Just as I did not recognize Africa for what it was – not the continent of Sydney Pollack or John Huston or David Lean or Michael Curtiz that I had been groomed to expect; not a romantic crucible for lovers or nations or movements; not the intersection of political destinies or even the earthen rostrum of humanity’s evolution; but a place whose essence escapes the self-obsession that plagues our species.
It is a place, Africa, where one cannot help but stand directly upon the planet.
Forced to guess, I would have been more inclined to predict that my memories of Africa would be associated with Blair and his cinematic safaris and our evenings on his island veranda. But not so. Looking back, I associate Blair with Hollywood and with the soul-devouring foolishness of that business with which I was once so entangled. Blair Gaines, master of the modern world, an illusionist, a task master to make me credible as someone else – a character, a person I am not – reminds me of Los Angeles.
But Los Angeles is certainly not Africa, upon which modernity, with all of its disguises and deception, alights, here and there, time and again, like an insect upon a dusty grey hide that is unmoved by anything so insubstantial. It is Africa, in all of its unvarnished allegiance to that which is ancient and true and unchanging, that makes me think of Angus Mann.
Upon returning to California, Blair was predictably cold and distant during our long days on the Bright Leaf Studios lot. If there was any patience or understanding or consideration to be given on the set, it was not to be given to me. If someone had kept a running tally of the times Blair stopped filming due to my error, I am certain the total would have far exceeded the cuts caused by any other actor in the production.
The problem was never my knowledge of the script. I made sure of that. I wrung every drop of spare time from the shooting schedule to learn the words of Colonel Elena Ivanova. Even as often as those words changed at the hands of Blair and the scriptwriters, I was never accused of not knowing the part. Rather, it was always in the subtleties of my effort to translate Ivanova into a genuinely human presence that Blair found reason to object – my improperly nuanced inflection, my intemperate eyes, my undisciplined gait.
I cannot say that Blair was always wrong in his criticisms of my performance, particularly if one adopts his view of Ivanova which, increasingly, was not my own. The criticism itself was not the problem. It was Blair’s own bad acting that rubbed me wrong. Every red-faced, finger-pointing, exasperated lecture; every public condescension, was ham-handed over-compensation for our clandestine sexual entanglement. It was all an act. The cast and crew on Blair’s films were quickly accustomed to his notoriously brusque manner – as though basic civility would take too much time and effort. But he was so over the top in his treatment of me – so aggressively disdainful – that I feared everyone would clearly understand what was going on between us in the evenings. It was I who longed to lecture him on nuanced inflection and intemperate eyes!
But I knew better and I endured his amateurish deception. Perhaps I would have been less tolerant of his acting limitations if, at that young age, I had more fully understood that it had been me who had cast him and not the other way around; that he, like so many others, was playing a role I had written for him a long time ago.
Here is the irony. Had Blair been more believably disdainful, more credibly off-put by my existence, I would likely have stayed in his orbit for a very long time. He was just so perfect for the part in so many ways. But his ultimate failing was his inability to conceal from me that he had been conquered. After two short months of his fake rejections and his inauthentic contempt, it was suddenly for me to do the rejecting. I was in control and we both knew it and that was, in hindsight, the kiss of death. My daily public upbraiding, his oft-repeated threats to replace me with other better-known actresses of the day, his demands to ravage me in savage ways in lieu of romantic dinners, all showed me a man over-acting; a man not in control; a man driven by a desire he knows is beneath him, but which, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot contain. I felt wanted. I felt approved. I felt validated. And that I could not abide.
I do not know the extent to which others associated with The Lion Tree were aware that Blair and I were carrying on after hours. Certainly there was a vague suspicion that predated me even meeting Blair. But that, along with a single tabloid headline published shortly after returning from Africa (“Temptress Tilly At It Again”) was owing to my reputation, not to any confirmed sighting or slip of the tongue.
The article was written around a single, very fuzzy photograph of me stepping out of a water taxi onto Blair’s island dock in Mombassa. Blair was extending a hand to help. One of my bare legs, pointing down into the boat, had escaped the long slit of my sarong. I am smiling.
The article was a sloppy tease piece and easily dismissed as such by everyone except my mother, who called almost instantly to lecture me on the importance of protecting my character; and she was not referring to Colonel Ivanova. Don’t lose this role, Tilly. It’s the role of a lifetime! Don’t lose it over something … silly!
I had objected to her insulting assumption with all of the exasperation and contempt as a repeated inflection of the human voice can allow. Ultimately, however, my mother was reassured not by anything I told her, but because she wanted to be reassured. My father, I imagine, doggedly assumed the worst about me and, therefore, was more attuned, as always, to the truth about me.
In any event, father aside, it is possible that despite Blair’s compensating displays, the anticipated tryst between director and starlet actually escaped detection by everyone.
Everyone except Angus Mann.
I do not know when he first understood what was going on. I never asked him. I do know that the first time I ever appreciated that Angus had caught on was during lunch at an outdoor café in Beverly Hills. Blair had asked for a meeting with the scriptwriters, myself, Casey Travern, who played the roll of Lieutenant Miller, and Angus, who I remember being in one of his silent broods as we took our seats and ordered.
Our table was roughly in the middle of an oval courtyard made of brick and strewn with thick flowering vines. A variety of delicate, brown birds flitted and hopped among the foliage looking for crumbs in the pools of white tablecloth, sometimes perching expectantly upon the canopy of umbrellas or atop trellises laden with red and purple bougainvillea that separated the tables for an artificial sense of privacy. Angus chose the shade and I, across from him and next to Blair, basked in the mid-day sun.
Shooting for the day had been scrapped due to technical difficulties with
the set construction – the dome of planet Rhuton-Baker, specially manufactured for the movie in large concave, pie shaped segments, had not been properly coated with a polymeric resin that evenly dispersed the light. After a small meltdown, Blair decided to take another conceptual run at the script while the manufacturer fixed the problem.
So, he invited everyone to lunch. In hindsight, I now understand that Blair wanted to buy the scriptwriters a last meal before he fired them and incited litigation against the studio. He knew what he wanted to do. All that was left was to gauge Angus’ interest in taking over the project and to send the writers packing. To do all of this rather spontaneously, in public, and over lunch was simply what it meant to be Blair Gaines.
It was as the plates were being cleared that one of the two scriptwriters, the one whose fondness for pretension was apparent in the way he sculpted his goatee, unwittingly segued our discussion in the direction of his own unemployment.
“Well, let me just say this about the whole epilogue debate,” he said, winking at his shorter, balder partner. “Now that we have retooled Lieutenant Miller’s escape attempt – now that that scene really hums – I think you’re set up for an interesting way to end this thing.”
Blair leaned back into his chair, taking a slow drink of wine. I caught Angus rolling his eyes as the waiter collected his plate. It was Casey Travern, a decent actor but not a particularly discerning man, who provided the encouragement.
“The escape attempt is great,” said Casey. “I’ll be able to do a lot with that. Really … you know, it’s … there’s a lot of momentum to it. I like how you don’t know what Miller is up to at first and then it very slowly dawns on you that he’s found a way out. He’s been working on this plan the whole time and Ivanova has been oblivious to the whole thing and you realize sort of all at once that he just might actually …make it.”
