The Fictional Man

by Al Ewing

  HALF AN HOUR later, Niles had lost nearly sixty dollars to Fred, and Fred had slowly loosened up about how Door To Nowhere had been turned into The Delicious Mr Doll. Niles couldn’t help wondering if those two facts were connected.

  “Hutton Hopper was a guy who lived in the squat for a while – this was in New York, down on the Lower East Side,” he said, flipping another tiddlywink into the ever-increasing pile, “and then later after that all fell apart, which was about the time the ratings for Door To Nowhere collapsed and I realised I was out of work, he comes at me with this idea to move to LA and split the rent on a place – me, him, his old lady and this guy Johnny Garfield. He took a lot of bennies. So anyway, I figured, hey, why not?” Niles saw the bet, and Fred turned over his cards – an eight and a Queen, joining the Queen, two Jacks, King and seven already in play. “Ladies on top, Jacks underneath – story of my life. What you got?”

  Niles sighed gently, turning over a two and a four. “Mind if we stop playing for a while? It’s a little distracting.” Not to mention potentially expensive.

  “What, you don’t wanna to win this back?” Fred flashed his gummy, cocksure grin, doing another of his little snickers. “Could be lucky.”

  Niles shook his head. He was fairly certain Fred was cheating, but he didn’t want to make any accusations just when the story was getting interesting. “So were you living with Hutton Hopper when he started work on Mr Doll?”

  Fred nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I was trying to get some short stories published in between working at a deli counter – I wasn’t doing so well at that. The stories, not the deli – you would not believe the kind of pussy you can score working behind a deli counter! I could tell you stories that’d curl your damn hair. This one dame, I swear – titties you could bounce a quarter off – she just comes in the door and asks for –”

  Niles started coughing loudly. He’d somehow managed to swallow his own saliva down the wrong pipe when Fred had mentioned the bouncing quarter. He tried to remember what the website had said about “The Doll House” and its exploration of gender roles, but it wasn’t coming to mind.

  Fred paused, made an apologetic face, and changed tack. “Well, never mind about that. I was doin’ okay in that department, that’s all I need to say. But those stories – it was the damn Door To Nowhere all over again. I’d take a hit of blotting paper, start banging on the keys, send whatever bullshit poured out to Collier’s and then act surprised when they didn’t take it. Took me a while to get outta that rut.” He sighed. “Did better than Garfield, though – he got shot pulling a liquor store robbery, did ten years in San Quentin. Hell of a waste, plus it left us in the hole with the rent.” He began to pack the cards away, sorting them into numbered and suited order before they went in the pack. Niles looked at the pile of tiddlywinks sitting in front of him – sorted as meticulously as the cards – and made a mental note never to play poker again. At least not with anyone over seventy.

  “Hopper, though... he was doing just fine.” Matson chuckled dryly. “He was knocking out these cheap sex novels every month for different publishers – Sorority Sinners, Harlot In Heat, The Man Stealers, that kinda thing. All different names – Tony Trellis was one he used a lot, and Eva Von Vance, that was for the lesbian stuff. Occasionally he’d do ’em as these serious scientific exposés, slap some fake degrees on the names – The Lust Equation, that was the big seller there, he did six more off the back of that one.” Matson grinned, nodding at Clarice as she walked by again.

  Niles’ voice was still a little hoarse from the coughing fit. “Didn’t you – sorry – didn’t you have a problem with the ethics of that? The, um, the exploitation factor?”

  “What are you talking about?” Matson looked confused. “Hopper groused about it occasionally, sure – even said he was trying to subvert the genre a couple times, like an asshole – but hell, it was easy money. Kept us in booze and pills. Anyway, you’re wondering how Door To Nowhere comes into all this, right?”

  “Right.” Niles leant forward, straining to hear. This was what he’d come to hear – the why of Mr Doll, and the how.

  “Hopper did these Private Eye novels too – under his own name. He used to do ’em when he got bored of the other stuff, and he’d pack ’em full of blood and guts, y’know, pushing the envelope – I remember the first one was Man In A Woodchipper, and then... aw, man, what was the one they almost couldn’t print?”He gave his unpleasant little snicker again. “A Cleaver For Clara. He had to cut about ten thousand words out of that one, most of the cleaver action – I remember he got a letter from his editor saying how he nearly called the cops when he read it. He said he was just giving the people who read that bullshit what they really wanted.” Matson closed his eyes for a second, chuckling at the memory. “Anyway, one of these things – and this one’s a little more us-against-the-commies than usual, I think it was called Sickle Where The Sun Don’t Shine – one of these things gets to a big shot at Talisman Pictures, and they love it. What’s not to love, right?”

  Niles smiled hollowly. Quite a lot, by the sound of it.

  “So this bigwig, he gets Hopper’s number and asks if he’s available to work up a screenplay.” His eyes twinkled. “Guess what they wanted?”

  Niles wet his lips. “A Bond knockoff.”

  Matson nodded, grinning. “Right. Secret agent stuff. And they wanted it hard-boiled, see? But not quite fella-goes-into-a-woodchipper-on-page-one hard-boiled. Not sickle-up-the-ass hard-boiled either. And they definitely don’t want it too sexy.”

  “They don’t?”

  “Not yet.” Matson snickered, shaking his head. “So they want Hopper, but they don’t want Hopper to be Hopper. That’s Hollywood, right?”

  Niles remembered his meeting with Dean. “...Right.”

  “So Hopper, he’s bored right away – like before he even gets started – so he’s putting it off, putting it off... but on the other hand this is the big time, you know? So he’s kind of looking around for something, some idea that’s gonna make it interesting enough for him to start on. And that’s when he finds a bunch of old Door To Nowhere stuff. We were” – he was snickering again – “we were using that crap as the lining for a parakeet cage, can you believe it? So he goes to change the parakeet and he starts reading this script all covered in parrot shit... he’s saying, ‘this is blowing my mind, man!’” He started chuckling, then laughing loudly, a harsh, raucous sound that echoed around the room. Clarice was walking through with a fresh towel and some talcum powder, and she gave him a worried look. “‘This is blowing my goddamn mind!’ Ha!”

  “That was ‘The Doll House’?”

  “Right. The one Shatner butchered. Jesus, that’s a story for another day.” Matson’s laughter faded, and he gave Niles a long, speculative look, still smiling his gummy smile. “That’s the one you came here to talk to me about?”

  “Yes,” the author smiled, “you see, I was wanting to re-adapt it, if you will, for a remake of The Delicious Mister –”

  “You mean steal it,” the screenwriter hissed. “Like Hopper did. After I used my golden words to clean up after his parakeet!” He drew himself out of the chair, rising to his full height, and pointed an imperious finger. “Get thee hence!”

  Niles paused. “...yes.”

  Matson raised an eyebrow. “You a reporter? I heard there was a remake in the works.”

  “I’m... um.” Niles swallowed hard, staring down at his hands. “I’m a writer.”

  “Huh.” Matson grinned. “Well, here’s what happened. Hopper reads the thing, and he tells me it’s perfect for what he wants to do. Apparently it’s full of all this gender-bender stuff, all this queer David Bowie crap – anyway, Hopper wants to... Jesus, how did he say it... he wants to ‘smuggle a conversation’ past the studio people.” Matson rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. So he sits down and does this way-over-the-top take on ‘Doll House’ as this secret agent fantasy, and he’s highlighting all the gender stuff he said was in there –
which was all news to me, let me tell you –”

  “But...” Niles started, then stopped. Matson waved the objection aside.

  “Anyway. Susan Sontag had just written that piece on camp, so I kind of knew what he was going for, but... man, this was vicious. Like those movies he made. Vicious camp. He had hate in his eyes for James Bond, you know? Anyway, the studio loved it – I could have told him they would – and then they put this crazy French guy on it, or maybe he was Italian, and he put all the sex back in and then a little bit more – I figure he’d read plenty of Tony Trellis – and Hopper got so royally pissed off about what they did to it, he moved to the goddamn desert and started churning out the gore films. He said that’s what the culture wanted, so that’s what the culture deserved.” Matson shrugged, shaking his head with a smile. “Hutton Hopper, God rest his soul. Craziest son of a bitch I ever knew.”

  “Wait.” Niles shook his head, feeling completely out of his depth. “You’re saying that you... you never intended ‘The Doll House’ to be about masculinity? About, about war, and the male, um, drive to...” He tailed off. Matson was snickering again. Niles was starting to hate that sound.

  “Ah, it was anti-war, sure.” He nodded. “Everything we did then was anti-war. We were seriously considering changing the title to War Is Nowhere until management told us we were being assholes. But all that masculinity stuff... ah, who knows where that came from. It’s in there if you want to look for it, I guess.” He shrugged again, looking apologetic, as if he was sorry he couldn’t do more.

  “Well...” Niles blinked, looking down at the pile of tiddlywinks, representing the sixty dollars he’d paid for these answers. He wondered if he could just leave without paying, or if Matson would kick up a fuss. He’d certainly tell Clarice about it, and Niles wasn’t sure he could take a dressing-down right now. “Well, what was it about? If you don’t mind me asking?”

  Matson was silent for a few moments, mulling the question over in his mind. “Toys,” he said at last. “Barbies, toy soldiers, stuff like that. Things children play with, things they make up stories for. I guess I just wondered how a toy soldier might feel if he was taken out of his box and taken to tea with some dollies.”

  “And that’s it?” Niles felt intensely disappointed. He’d assumed there was some deep meaning to be found in the original story, but Matson was just a mediocre writer who’d wasted his life after all. And worse, his ‘bold take’ on the Mr Doll material was just a pale, toothless imitation of Hutton Hopper’s savage original critique of Bond – of course, Niles had seen the irony in it all along – and it’d probably be dealt with in much the same way. Some music director would sweep in, fill the screen with explosions and lingerie, and render any statement he tried to make worthless. He was back at a dead end.

  “That’s it,” Matson sighed. “I guess I was just ahead of my time.”

  Niles narrowed his eyes. “How so?”

  “Ah, how things are now.” He indicated the direction Bob had left in. “People like your friend. Not much different to a G.I. Joe, if you think about it. Make up a story for him, set him loose, and if he doesn’t like it... tough shit, right?” Matson chuckled again, but this time it was bitter, as if he wasn’t much liking the story that had been drawn up for him, either.

  Niles wasn’t paying attention.

  He’d had a wonderful idea. A perfect, stupendous idea.

  The new Mr Doll would be about Fictionals.

  It had been staring him in the face the whole time – ever since he’d seen the review for ‘The Doll House’ – but it had taken him until now to really see it. The one subject that cinema hadn’t yet made its definitive statement on. The one subject that was right in front of their noses and nobody had tackled. The elephant in the room, the taboo, the festering wound nobody dared to cut open. Fictionals. Their feelings, their hopes and dreams.

  Dalton Doll would be the first Fictional to portray a Fictional. It would be a brilliant meta-narrative about the making of a secret agent movie – and of course, the Fictional playing the secret agent would get caught up in some real secret agent shenanigans. Girls in lingerie. Magnificent explosions.

  It’d win an Oscar.

  Niles reached into his pocket, drawing out his wallet, and Matson stopped him with a rueful smile. “Ah, I was just joking about the money, kid. How about we call it a tab? Maybe next time you come by we could –”

  “Mr Matson,” Niles ignored him, putting six ten-dollar bills on the table, “could I get permission from you to use that idea? It’s just that there’s something I’m writing at the moment which –”

  Matson shook his head, showing his gums again. “Oh, I don’t think I can sell you that idea, Mr Golan.”

  Niles flushed. “Well, I wasn’t actually... ah...”

  “It’s not mine to sell.” He shrugged, grinning wider. “Got it out of a children’s book.”

  Niles stared at the old man. “I’m sorry?”

  He burst into laughter. “What, you thought I ever had an original idea in my life? No, The Doll’s Delight, that’s what it was called. Saw it in some girl’s apartment I was crashing in, had to have it. Strangest damn book I ever saw. Ended up selling it for windowpane. Anyway, there was this verse in it about toy soldiers running away from the war and going to play with the dolls – I pretty much wrote the whole script that night. Sat in a drawer until I had a place to sell it.”

  “So... who wrote that? The children’s book?” Niles felt like he was on a ship at sea. Every five minutes ground he thought was perfectly solid would shift beneath his feet. He hadn’t felt so uprooted from reality since... well, since what had happened with Danica Moss.

  Matson stared into the distance. “Let me see... it was D-somebody... Dalton? No, that was something else. Sounded like it, though. And I’m pretty sure there was an H in there some –”

  At that moment, Clarice reached down from seemingly nowhere and grabbed the sixty dollars off the table, waving them in Niles’ face.

  “What the hell,” she screamed, “is this?”

  “ALL RIGHT, ALL right, I’m on my way out...” Niles marched briskly through the lobby, past the mortifying gaze of the nurse on duty, who had presumably had her every suspicion about Niles confirmed.

  Considering the humiliation of the situation, Niles was in remarkably good spirits. For one thing, he definitely wouldn’t feel any obligation to go back and talk to Matson again now, so he was off the hook there. For another thing, he had the perfect idea for Mr Doll – he could even work Bob’s problems into it, give the thing some dramatic depth. A Fictional playing a Fictional – it was a fantastic idea, and it’d probably produce the most emotionally stable Fictional yet. He’d bounce the idea off Bob on the way back, see what he made of it...

  But when Niles reached the Ford Taurus, Bob was nowhere to be found.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “BOB? LISTEN, CAN you give me a call back as soon as you get this? I’m waiting by the car, but I’ve been waiting here about twenty minutes and I’m going to have to get moving soon. It’s, um, it’s Niles. Bye.”

  Voicemail again. Niles ended the call and looked around, hoping to see some sort of sign that might show him where Bob had run off to, willing a mall or a Denny’s or a park to pop into existence – anything apart from the nursing home and the barren stretch of sidewalk it was situated on. There was literally nothing here but concrete, a few spare blades of grass, some shuttered buildings that could have been offices or apartments – or squats, he thought bitterly, thinking of Matson – and a closed-up gas station. He couldn’t see that Bob would have wandered into any of those, unless he’d discovered a sudden taste for urban exploration.

  He could just about make out a bus stop a few hundred yards away, but the idea seemed absurd. Why would Bob just hop on a bus home? He’d have known Niles would be coming out to drive him home any minute. All right, Niles had been a little late, maybe, and it was an unseasonably hot day, even for California, but still.
Surely Bob wouldn’t have just deserted him here?

  He turned around and marched up to the glass doors of the nursing home – then marched back again as he saw the head nurse staring out at him like a basilisk. He’d thought he could pop in and have a look around – made sure he and Bob hadn’t just missed each other somehow, and he wasn’t still wandering around in there – but to be honest, they’d have thrown him out by now as well.

  Niles checked his phone for the time, made sure it wasn’t on silent, and then looked in the direction of the empty car. It had been almost twenty-five minutes now. There wasn’t anything else for it.

  He unlocked the door and slid in behind the wheel, mentally willing Bob to appear at the last possible second. But Bob didn’t show.

  “BOB? LISTEN, I need you to give me a call back. If you’re still at the home, I can come back and get you, I won’t be upset, just give me a call, all right? I’m on the freeway at the moment, so I can easily – hang on, a police car just pulled out behind me. He’s signalling me to pull over. Hang on. Look, as soon as you get this, give me a call and I’ll come find you wherever you – shit, he’s tapping on the window. I’ll try again later. It’s Niles. Bye.”

  “BOB? LISTEN, PLEASE give me a call back. I just got a ticket for $150. I’m at home now. Look, I’ll be here for a while, if you need me to come pick you up – well, let me know if you’re okay. Um. It’s Niles. Bye.”

  Niles flopped into his couch, staring up at the ceiling. He supposed he should be working on the pitch, but he was too worried about where Bob might be to really think about that. It wasn’t that he thought Bob was in trouble – with his build, there wasn’t realistically that much trouble he could get in. Well, unless he was shot. Or someone cut off his finger with pinking shears. Or something else.

  “Yes, that’s his head,” the author said mournfully, as the police opened the box to show him the carefully stuffed and lacquered object. “You say you found it on eBay?”