Prodigal Sons

by Mike Miner

  If Ron Sydney was surprised to find his best employee naked at his desk, he made no sign of it. A massive individual who filled every room he entered with his fatness, Ron looked as though he’d been built out of spiral cut hams—everything thick and meaty. A lion’s mane of fine white hair crowned his anvil of a head. “Good, you’re here,” he said with a pleasant smile and popped a videotape into the digital beta machine beneath the television across from Matthew’s desk. Ron’s voice was startling and dainty—much like his movements, which gave the impression of a gargantuan leprechaun. Matthew picked up his remote control and turned the TV on. “Have you seen this yet?” Ron sat in one of the chairs in front of Matthew’s desk.

  Too stunned to speak, Matthew just pressed play on his remote. It was something they did every day, reviewed the morning reel. Normally they were both fully dressed—though often Ron didn’t wear his shoes in the office. They watched a thirty-second football promo. It looked like a commercial for World War III, all explosions and collisions and robots and tanks, “Sunday on Fox!” When it was through, Matthew pressed stop.

  “What do you think?”

  Matthew had to do some throat clearing. “The mix is terrible. The VO is buried under the effects. I’d change the font on the backplate too. Do we have to say, check local listings?”

  Ron nodded.

  “Then I’d make it as small as we can. There’s enough to read already.” Matthew wasn’t sure when it had happened, when he’d stopped seeing what he liked about a commercial and started picking at its flaws. He loved the initial pitch, but then like a bag of bad smack, a commercial got diluted and stepped on until it was more baby food than heroin and it barely got you high.

  Ron nodded. “I agree.” He stood. Matthew watched. “I’ll be right back.” Ron ejected the tape and closed the door behind him.

  The windows in Matthew’s office didn’t open, which was unfortunate, because he would have gladly thrown himself the five stories to his death. The previous night lay sunk beneath gallons of booze. His feeble mind could only retrieve the shallowest of memories. The later into the night he looked, the deeper and murkier things got. He had always had blackouts, but lately they were more frequent. Sometimes it seemed as though gremlins high on mescaline had seized the control room of his brain and taken his body out for a joyride. They had a knack for leaving him in the worst possible positions.

  He scanned the room for his clothes. There was a pile of blankets on his black leather couch. Occasionally, he pulled all-nighters for the really big deadlines. A small foot, a child’s foot, dangled off the side. Had Ron noticed?

  The door opened again and Ron entered holding some clothes. They were not Matthew’s. His heart surged.

  “I keep a change in my office.” He threw them at his naked employee. “Put these on and come see me.” An impish grin before he closed the door.

  Two or three Matthews could fit inside the khaki pants he held in front of him. The golf shirt was as big as a sail. After he was dressed, he had to hold up the pants and the shirt swam on him. A deep breath as he approached the couch and lifted the pillow that covered the sleeper’s face.

  Her short, messy hair was jet black and her thin face a beautiful medley of races held together by Asian eyes, their long lashes kissing. Dark skin was pulled tightly over her cheeks and blood red lips pouted under a small, almost unformed nose. Matthew could not remember ever seeing her before. Gently, he put the pillow back.

  Walking to Ron’s office, he felt like an inmate headed for the electric chair. He was grateful that no one else had made it into the office yet. Empty cubicles waited patiently for a day of work.

  Ron sat at his desk reading something. He lowered his glasses and surveyed Matthew’s new wardrobe. “Shut the door.” Ron looked at his clothes on Matthew. “Well, it’s an improvement.”

  Matthew stretched the waist of the pants out wide. Clown pants. He could have used a pair of suspenders. “Yup.”

  “Have a seat.”

  A big, brown leather couch underneath a huge window that spied on LA from the Hollywood sign to the Santa Monica Pier.

  “Did I ever tell you about my trip to Moscow when I was working for Nixon?”

  Under the circumstances, this seemed to be the strangest question Ron could have asked. Matthew shrugged and shook his head.

  “It was a while back. I used to handle all of the President’s press events. Make sure they got a flattering shot, that sort of thing.” Ron paused and smiled at Matthew. “How you feeling?”

  Another shrug.

  A bottle of Macallan 25 scotch and a glass were produced from a desk drawer. Matthew raised his eyebrows when Ron poured a few fingers into a glass and pushed it toward him. After a pause, Matthew took it and sat back down. Ron put the bottle back into a drawer. The first sip made Matthew shiver. The second one felt better. Ron studied all of this carefully.

  “So Nixon has this thing to do at the Kremlin and I’d worked on the campaign and knew some people on Nixon’s staff—the USC crowd.

  “I go and set up everything I’m responsible for: where the president enters, where the press will be. It all comes down to one shot, the money shot. In this case it was the president shaking hands with what’s his name.” Ron’s hand tried to coax the name out of the air.

  “Brezhnev?”

  “Whoever it was. So I took care of my stuff and didn’t have much to do the next day, the day of the Summit.”

  He licked his teeth, tasted the scotch. It was good. His head felt better. “Summit?”

  Ron nodded. “Night after we get there,” Ron’s thick arms flew out from his sides as he got more into his story, “we go out with a bunch of these Russian generals. They’ve got these long, unpronounceable names.” Ron’s high-pitched giggle bounced around the room. “One of the fellas I was with, Sam, just calls ’em all Ivan.”

  A nervous smile.

  “Well we just get blind drunk on vodka. Loaded. Last thing I remember is trading Mickey Mouse pins for military gear with these generals. I’ve still got one of those jackets and a few medals. By the end of the night I’m speaking Russian. I wake up, passed out on the floor of my hotel room with the phone ringing.”

  Matthew pictured the scene. He swirled the last sip around in his glass, savoring it.

  “Seems Sam is in the hospital getting his stomach pumped.” Ron exploded with laughter and Matthew chuckled. “Son of a bitch almost died. But he’s going to make it, only we need someone to babysit the press corps. Who can we get?”

  He pointed at Ron.

  “You got it. Only one way I’m going to be able to even function that day,” he said and paused.

  “A little hair of the dog?”

  Ron smiled. “So I have a few shots and off I go.”

  The empty glass in his hand made Matthew sad. He remembered his interview in this same office. It had lasted about ten minutes—he and Ron had clicked instantly. By the end of the day, Matthew had put together a budget and a schedule for a shoot and he was off and running. It was weeks before he took a day off. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Ron had asked. Matthew had pointed to the office he had slept in last night, “Right there.”

  “I always used to get pissed off at the way the Russians held their press conferences.”

  “How so?”

  “They’d let their reporters get the story first so that AP would pick up their pictures and fucking Pravda would look like they scooped everybody in the international press. Like the goddamned kitchen debate with Khrushchev. What a fucking shitstorm that was. Little petty bullshit and Sam would just take it. I get to the Kremlin and it’s the same shit. Russian press only.”

  Ron stopped and smiled, tasting the memory.

  “Only they’re not dealing with timid little Sam Ross this time. This isn’t my first trip to Moscow. I know the fucking Kremlin and I know where they’re holding the fucking press conference and I damn well know another way to get there. I sneak the press corp
s down a few hallways until we’re just around the corner.”

  “How many people in the press corps?”

  Ron sucked in his cheeks as he thought. “About a dozen. You should’ve seen the look in Peter Jennings’ eyes. He was just a kid. He looked like he was in a James Bond movie. In hindsight I guess I might have had a few too many pops because the next thing you know I yell, ‘Charge!’ and lead a phalanx of reporters into the back door of the conference room. They all made it too.”

  Ron seemed to be back in Moscow. “You can imagine my surprise when instead of a press conference we stumble upon a tea party with Pat and Breshnev’s wife.”

  “Pat Nixon?”

  “Apparently there had been some changes made inside the Kremlin since the sixties.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “A few KGB agents grabbed me and hauled me away.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Ron raised his right hand. “On a stack of Bibles. They dragged me to this little room and brought in an interrogator.”

  “No.”

  “Yup. I never thought I’d ever see the land of the free and the home of the brave again. ’Course I was hollering at them. ‘What are you doing? Do you know who I am? I’m an American.’”

  “What happened?”

  “Finally the CIA shows up. Then the big question gets asked.”

  “What was that?”

  “Mr. Sydney, have you been drinking?”

  Matthew laughed.

  “Not so’s you’d notice.” Ron chuckled.

  Matthew pictured Ron trying out that same chuckle on the CIA and the KGB.

  “At least they got me out of there and out of the country on the first plane to London. I woke up the next day to the phone ringing.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Tricky Dick himself.”

  “Richard Nixon?”

  “‘What happened, Ron?’” Ron did a perfect Nixon impression. “‘Well sir, we were with these Russian generals.’ ‘That’s all they do is drink, Ron.’”

  Ron gave a Nixon shake of his jowls. “‘I know Mr. President.’ So he reamed me and I went back to DC, tail fully between my legs.”

  Matthew tried to picture a younger Ron minus the gray hair and about fifty pounds.

  Digging into one of the drawers in his desk, Ron came out with a framed picture: two serious men in serious overcoats and enormous, serious hats that looked like twin chinchillas resting on their heads escorted a young Ron Sydney out of what Matthew could only assume was the Kremlin. He was thinner than Matthew had imagined and blonder. He looked cold in his tweed jacket. There was a caption underneath the picture in Russian.

  “What’s it say?”

  “American reporter thrown out of the Kremlin for selling Mickey Mouse pins.” Ron giggled. “Well, the word got out about the drinking. Nixon was not the most tolerant man when it came to that. It was a different time too.”

  Different from now, Matthew gathered, different from last night. He looked around for somewhere to put his empty glass.

  Ron took a piece of paper out of another drawer; his desk seemed to hold something appropriate for every occasion. It looked like a check. “The security cameras caught quite a bit of the shenanigans last night with you and the...” he paused and squinted, scratched his ear. “... the young lady.”

  The young lady.

  “You remember anything?”

  Matthew shook his head, no. The young lady.

  “I figured. Be glad it was Ramon on duty last night. That man’s worked in this town for about a million years. He’s seen some stuff. Enough that a young ad exec running around with a dangerously young looking woman,” Ron narrowed his eyes at Matthew, “wouldn’t make him call the cops.” Ron drummed his fingers on his desk. “He didn’t appreciate you throwing your clothes at him. You can pick them up and your wallet at the guard station.”

  They both took deep breaths. Matthew nodded in anticipation. Ron covered his mouth with a big left hand, the sound of fingers sliding over stubble, the sound of a reluctant lecture.

  “It took me a long time to get sober.”

  Matthew closed his eyes.

  “I am not saying you need to get sober.”

  What are you saying? Matthew thought.

  “I am saying that Macallan is the last drink I’m offering you. I am saying you are relieved of your duties here for a few months.”

  His head was suddenly too heavy for his neck.

  “This is for you.” Ron handed him a cashier’s check. “It’s made out for ten thousand dollars. Double my severance package from Nixon.”

  Matthew held it but didn’t look at it.

  “You can consider it severance or you can consider it a loan.”

  He thought about how those last two words ran together. ‘Alone.’ How well it described him.

  “There’s enough money there for you to do one of two things.” Ron held up two massive fingers. “Drink yourself to death or get the help you need. I suggest you pick one. I drank myself out of a job, a marriage and my kids didn’t speak to me for twenty years.” From the frames on his desk, Ron’s kids vouched for this. He watched Matthew inspect the contents of the envelope. “My card is in there too. You get into a jam and need some help, consider it one get out of jail free card. You only get one. You’re not exactly fired, let’s call it a sabbatical. If I don’t hear from you in six months...”

  In a daze, Matthew walked back to his office. Another drink would help—he was sweating like an umbrella drink at a resort pool bar. Did he look as bad as he felt? A shaky hand ran through his greasy hair. He locked his office door and sat behind his desk. The girl on the couch remained, still asleep. Things were not looking up for Matthew Flanagan. Christ, he’d worked his ass off to get this office. The only artwork on the hospital white walls was a large unevenly shaped piece from a mural, spray painted by the graffiti artist, Dalek. Matthew’s first big shoot, his first million-dollar budget. He had nailed it. Clients had called and asked for the guy who did that spot, the graffiti spot. The award he’d won stood proudly on a shelf against the same wall, vindicating his talent.

  He remembered watching Dalek and the other graffiti artists he’d wrangled, working together like kids in a candy store, still not believing somebody would pay them to do this. Matthew hadn’t felt like that in a long time. Had he ever? Envy had nipped at him. They looked like they were flying, like wings had sprouted from their backs. That night he had chased away the inspired looks on their faces with a jigger of Tullamore Dew, and another, and another; staring at the piece of the mural Dalek had given him. A space monkey, he’d called it. It looked like a deranged, yellow, drunken Mickey Mouse—with a hole in his head. He spun in his chair and looked at it on his office wall. Thanks for the memories.

  A last look around his office. He doubted if he would see it again. The young lady on his couch started to snore. She was still mostly buried under the blankets and pillows. After a few moments, her butterfly eyelids fluttered to life.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  She stretched like a cat and rolled back and forth. The girl could not have been more than five feet tall. How old was she? he wondered. After a long yawn, he held out a hand to her.

  “Matthew Flanagan. Pleased to meet you.”

  A school girl’s giggle escaped from her lips. “Tommy.” She reached out and shook his hand.

  “Tommy?”

  “Tomiko. Don’t you remember?”

  “I don’t remember a damned thing. Where did I meet you? Were you at Shoe’s?”

  “Who’s Shoe?”

  “Great.” His brain was a frozen lake and he was ice fishing for memories.

  “We met at Fred 62. You told me you could get me into the Bar Marmont.” She looked around. “Any of this ring a bell?”

  “Nope.”

  “Wow. You seemed pretty wasted. Don’t tell me you don’t remember the beach.”

  “What?” He
was getting nervous.

  “The stargazing? You told me about the constellations. It was very romantic.”

  He didn’t know a thing about constellations.

  “Then my friend left with the Professor.”

  “The Professor.” Of course.

  “Okay. So then you told me where you worked, you didn’t have a car and you were just going to crash here. So I drove us here. We started playing truth or dare. Hey, where did you find those clothes?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Tommy giggled again. Her eyes became thin slits. “You left your shoes on the beach. I dared you to run into the lobby naked. You had your clothes in your hands, but you threw them at a guard when we ran away.”

  Slowly, he digested all of this. “Did anything happen between you and me?”

  She winked at him. “You passed out. I considered molesting you, but I was pretty sleepy.”

  His face was in his hands.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “I think I’m fired.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “Need a ride home?”

  “I guess I do. Are you old enough to drive?”

  “I’ve been driving for nine months now.”

  “You’re sixteen?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Matthew groaned.

  Tommy rose from the couch, his couch, the couch formerly known as his. She wore a black tank top over low, hip hugger blue jeans. On her right shoulder blade a bat tattoo flapped its wings. She stepped into chunky heeled sandals that added at least three inches to her and snapped her fingers. “Let’s cruise.”

  Where were these girls when I was in high school?

  She drove a beat up black Jeep Wrangler with a soft top. A black leather jacket from the back seat and a pair of oversized sunglasses from the glove compartment completed her ‘too cool for school’ look. The jeep trembled to life when she turned the key. “Where to?”

  “The 405 north. Just keep going.”

  He was grateful that when they were on the freeway—the wind was too loud for them to speak to each other. Traffic ground to a halt at the Sepulveda Pass. Tommy reached for a pack of Marlboros and pulled one out with her lips. Offered him the pack and he took one. She popped the car lighter in with her fist. Her work on the gear shift made him queasy.