Big Egos

by S. G. Browne

  “What’s the scene again?” I ask.

  “For Christ’s sake!” My mother taps her ashes into the sink. “Do I really have to work with him? Can’t we get someone more professional?”

  One of the members of the film crew, an intern or some kind of assistant, comes over with an ashtray for my mother, which he holds out for her while she taps her ashes into it. It takes me a second before I realize the assistant is Nat.

  Scorsese stands up and walks over to the kitchen table and leans on it, resting his weight on both hands as he stares down at me. “What are you doing?”

  I look up at my father, at Martin Scorsese, and I wonder if he’s still pissed-off that he lost the 1990 Best Picture Oscar to Dances with Wolves. “I think I’ve forgotten my lines.”

  He looks at me and shakes his head and lets out the smallest of sighs. The look of disappointment on his face is as familiar as my own reflection.

  “What have I told you about playing the part?” he says. “We’ve gone over this time and time again. Always know your role.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “And never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.”

  I look past him to the rest of the crew, where Delilah stands next to the director’s chair with a script in her hand. She’s either the script supervisor or the assistant director, I don’t know, but she doesn’t look happy. Next to her, Neil sits behind the film camera while Chloe holds the boom mic and Angela and Emily stand off to the side, gaffers or grips or some other film job you read on the closing credits but you have no idea who the people are or what they actually do. Vincent sits in the background wearing headphones. I don’t see Kurt.

  “Line!” yells my father, not looking away from me.

  Delilah rolls her eyes and reads from the script. “When is Dad coming home?”

  Well, that narrows it down. This could be one of any number of times I asked my mother that question.

  “What’s the next line?” I ask.

  My father continues to stare at me.

  “Then your mother says, ‘Soon, honey. He’ll be home soon.’ ” Delilah looks up from the script. “Do you need your next line?”

  “Please.”

  “How soon is soon?”

  I never realized how many times my mother and I had the same conversation about my father.

  My father stands up. “You got all that?”

  Behind him, the film crew waits for my response. None of them look happy.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that to convince me,” he says.

  “Do you mean now or once we start filming?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, there’s not a difference.” My father turns and walks back to the camera and sits down in the director’s chair.

  I’m beginning to think I’m not cut out to be an actor.

  “Okay,” says my father. “Let’s try this again.”

  “First positions!” shouts Delilah. “Everyone quiet. Going for picture.”

  My mother turns her back to me. At first I think she’s doing it because she’s fed up with my lack of professionalism, until I realize she’s just getting into position.

  “Sound?” says Delilah.

  “Sound’s clear,” says Vincent, who is apparently the sound engineer.

  “All right,” says Delilah. “Roll sound.”

  “Speed,” says Vincent.

  Delilah gives me one final look. “And roll camera.”

  “Rolling.”

  Emily walks out in front of the kitchen table with a clapperboard and turns toward the camera. “Where’s Dad? Scene thirteen. Take twenty.”

  Apparently we’ve been at this for a while.

  Then Emily slaps the clapsticks together and moves out of the way.

  My father looks us over and then raises his right hand in the air, his index finger extended and moving in small circles. “And . . . action.”

  “When’s Dad coming home?” I say.

  “Soon, honey.” My mother says her line with her back to me as she washes something in the sink. “He’ll be home soon.”

  “How soon is soon?”

  “As soon as he can, dear.”

  I don’t remember my mother sounding this exasperated when I was a kid, but at least the lines are starting to come back to me.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe,” she says.

  “Do you think he’ll bring back something for me this time?”

  “Maybe. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  That’s an understatement. In order for me to get my hopes up about my father bringing me a present, I would have to climb down into a cellar.

  I look away from my mother and down at the table, where a piece of Sara Lee apple pie sits on a plate in front of me, so I take a bite.

  “Can I have some ice cream?”

  “Cut,” says my father.

  “Jesus Christ!” My mother takes off her apron and throws it on the floor before storming off the set with Nat trailing after her.

  “What?” I say. “What did I do?”

  “That’s a cut,” says Delilah. “Everyone take five.”

  The crew gets up and heads over to grab some coffee and snacks as my father gets up from his chair and walks over to me.

  “Did I miss my lines?” I ask.

  “It’s not the lines.” He sits down at the table across from me. “It’s just that I’m not feeling it from you.”

  “Feeling what?”

  “Sincerity, son. You have to surrender yourself to the role. Make me believe it’s you.”

  But I am me, I think. How can I not know how to play me?

  My father leans forward on his elbows. “You need to put a little more passion into it. Give it some emotion. Make it more real.”

  He gives me a long, disappointed look, then stands up and turns around and walks away. Delilah approaches me a moment later and throws a copy of the script down on the table in front of me.

  “Try not to screw up your lines again,” she says.

  CHAPTER 42

  My cell phone rings. When I open my eyes, the bedroom is bathed in darkness and shadows. Delilah lies beneath the covers with her back to me and as far to the other side of the bed as possible. She doesn’t stir. Either she’s in a post-Ego coma or she’s ignoring me.

  I pick up the phone and press ANSWER. Before I can say anything, Nat’s already talking.

  “. . . don’t know what to do! You gotta help me!”

  He sounds out of breath and frantic. On the bedside table, the green digital numbers of the calendar alarm clock tell me it’s 2:08 in the morning on Tuesday, December 7. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “I’m in trouble, bro!”

  More than once over the past couple of weeks I’ve thought about calling Nat to try to reconcile, extend the proverbial olive branch, but I figured he would just slap it away or set it on fire. So my first thought is that Nat’s changed his mind about not wanting my friendship and is falling into old habits, calling me to come to his rescue in order to break the ice. I don’t think there’s anything really wrong.

  “What kind of trouble?” I say as I get out of bed and walk out of the bedroom, not wanting to wake up Delilah and invite her wrath.

  “You gotta come get me!” he says.

  I let out a sigh. “Where are you?”

  No response but I can hear faint sounds, feet running and someone breathing hard, followed by something that sounds like glass breaking, then Nat shouting out either in pain or surprise.

  “Nat?”

  No response. And I’m suddenly beginning to think he might actually be in some kind of trouble.

  “Nat, what’s going on?”

  “I went down to Hollywood to get some Egos,” he says, his words coming out rushed between breaths. “This guy who sells them off Wilcox. I couldn’t help myself.”

  I should have known he’d do something like this, which makes me feel
bad about the way I took his Egos away.

  “But then something happened,” he says. “And I just took all of them and ran.”

  “Wait . . . you took them?” I say.

  I hear street noises in the background. Traffic. Voices. Someone shouting. The sound of a siren.

  “It was just . . . I always wanted to be like you, you know?” he says. “Popular and confident. I couldn’t stand who I was but I couldn’t seem to do anything about it, no matter what I did. But then I started injecting Egos and everything changed and I didn’t want to go back to the way I was.”

  This is the first time Nat has ever shared any of this with me. I open my mouth to tell him I’m sorry, but that sounds so trite and I don’t know what else to say.

  “I fucked up, bro.” There’s a pause and all I hear is the sound of Nat breathing, followed by a single choked sob. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

  I can hear him crying now, his breath coming out in hitched sobs. Someone in the background is laughing.

  “Nat, where are you?”

  “I’m on Hollywood Boulevard,” he says, sniffling. “Near the Hollywood/Vine station. Can you come get me?”

  “I’ll be right there,” I say. “Just stay put.”

  There’s another pause, only this time I don’t hear Nat breathing. For a second I think I’ve lost the connection and I’m about to hang up and call him back, then I hear his voice again, but it doesn’t sound like he’s talking to me.

  “Oh fuck.”

  “Nat. What’s wrong?”

  I hear voices and more shouting, mixed in with Nat’s panicked breathing. It sounds like he’s running.

  “Nat?”

  A car horn blares and I hear the sound of tires screeching. Somebody shouts out something unintelligible.

  “Nat?”

  I hear the voices getting closer, followed by Nat’s voice, calling for help. Someone shouts, “You motherfucker!”

  “Nat!”

  CHAPTER 43

  Wires run from Nat to the EKG monitor next to his bed at the Los Angeles Medical Center on Sunset Boulevard. He’s hooked up to a ventilator and a feeding tube and some other contraption I can’t identify. There are so many machines plugged into him that he looks like a science experiment.

  Are you still you if machines are keeping you alive?

  In the bed next to him, behind the dividing curtain, an older woman with a raspy voice keeps coughing and spitting up phlegm and calling out for help.

  “Nurse?” she says.

  It’s after 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, twenty hours after Nat called me and a little over two weeks before Christmas. I’ve been sitting here for the past three hours talking to him, looking for some kind of response, anything to let me know that he hears me. That he knows I’m here. But he remains motionless except for his chest moving up and down from the ventilator inflating his lungs. The only noises he’s making are coming from the machines keeping him on life support. The only one doing any talking other than me is the elderly woman next door.

  “Nurse?”

  “Nat? Can you hear me, buddy?” I say. “If you can hear me, I just want you to know that I’m sorry for . . .”

  For what? For not being there when he needed me? For taking his Egos? For getting him hooked on Egos in the first place?

  “I’m sorry for everything,” I say.

  I look at him lying there, not saying anything, so I keep talking. I’ve been talking so much that I’ve started to grow tired of the sound of my own voice. But I have to keep trying, just in case Nat can hear me. And not talking seems to make the guilt that much harder to bear.

  On the other side of the curtain, the old woman continues to call out for help.

  “Nurse?”

  “Hey,” I say. “Remember that time we were playing Emergency and you set your garbage can on fire and nearly burned down your bedroom and we convinced your mom you just burned a couple of pizzas?”

  Nat just lies there, unresponsive.

  “Or that time you got trapped in the trunk of your mom’s car while playing Hostage?”

  Not a nod or a twitch.

  “Or when we played the Seven Plagues of Egypt and that gopher snake got down your pants and bit your left testicle and wouldn’t let go?”

  My laughter floats through the room alone.

  All of this reminiscing about the two of us getting into trouble, all of these memories that we shared over the course of our childhood, and I’m the only one who gets to enjoy it.

  “Is anybody there?” asks the old woman.

  I look at Nat, at the bruises and the abrasions and the broken nose, at the cast on his right shoulder and the bandage wrapped around his shaved head, my anger mixing in with my guilt. Someone should have to answer for what happened to Nat. Someone other than me.

  I take hold of his hand. “Hey pal, you still in there?”

  He answers with more silence.

  “If you can hear me, just give a squeeze.”

  His hand is dead weight in mine.

  “Wiggle a finger. Raise an eyebrow. Flip me off. Anything.”

  Nothing. Not a hint of a wiggle or a smile.

  Next door, the woman coughs and spits up more phlegm.

  “Can someone raise my bed?” she says.

  I don’t want to leave Nat, so I press the call button for the nurse. Then, still holding Nat’s hand, I close my eyes and do something I’ve never done before because my father taught me not to believe in anything but myself. Not Santa Claus. Not the Easter Bunny. Not God.

  Truth is, I don’t know what I believe in anymore.

  But I figure it couldn’t hurt to try. So I ask whoever or whatever might be out there to help Nat. To make him better. To show me how I can help him. To show me what to do. Then I sit and listen to the respirator and the EKG machine, waiting for an answer. But the only response to my prayer is the sound of the woman next to us coughing and hacking and calling out for help.

  “Someone help me,” says the woman. “I can’t breathe.”

  I’m about to get up to go over to help her when the door opens and the nurse walks in.

  I’m probably imagining things, but she looks like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. For a moment I wonder if she’s on an Ego trip or if it’s just a natural resemblance. I also wonder if I’m at the Los Angeles Medical Center or the Metropolitan State Hospital. Then I glance down and see I’m wearing black pants and loafers instead of white scrubs and slippers, which is a relief. I just hope Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito don’t come walking through the door.

  “Is everything okay?” asks Nurse Ratched.

  I nod. “I think the woman in the other bed needs some help.”

  The nurse disappears behind the curtain and I sit and stare at my comatose best friend, at his chest artificially rising and falling, at his broken body and the wires and tubes and machines feeding him and keeping him alive. Tears threaten to fill up my eyes and spill down my cheeks, but I can’t give in to my grief. Not now. Not when Nat needs me the most.

  I sit and stare at him and think about how we used to play Emergency and how Nat would get into trouble and I would have to figure out how to solve the problem. This is a lot like that, only this time, it’s real.

  “I’m going to fix this,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you before, but I’m going to find a way to make it right.”

  Next door, the woman starts coughing and gagging and retching.

  CHAPTER 44

  The Easter Bunny is throwing up in the bushes.

  He’s heaving, his entire body working to cleanse his insides of the alcohol that has poisoned him, his deep, anguished cries following the beer and bile out of his mouth.

  “Waaaaaaaaaaaaggh!”

  He sounds like a tuba having an orgasm.

  “You think we should call a doctor?” says Nat, who is dressed up like a satyr, with faux fur chaps and a real goatee he grew all by himself. Even his horns look al
most real. Either that or I’ve smoked way too much pot.

  “No,” I say as a cute little brunette wearing a pink satin corset and a pink chiffon skirt with matching wings walks up to the Easter Bunny and taps him on the back with her wand. “It looks like the Tooth Fairy is coming to his rescue.”

  Where we are is the front porch for the annual Mythical Creatures party at Alpha Kappa Phi during November of our junior year at UCLA. I’m sitting on the porch wall in my red Santa suit with my white wig and synthetic beard while Nat stands nearby, checking out the action. In addition to the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, the other party guests includes gargoyles, leprechauns, vampires, werewolves, zombies, the bogeyman, a mermaid, Poseidon, Lady Luck, Satan, a guy in a diaper dressed up as Baby New Year, and some blond joker wearing a neoprene particle mask and heavy-duty blue mortician’s gloves who claims he’s Death.

  It’s the party of the year. Everyone is here pretending to be someone else. And most of them are really drunk. Like Peter Cottontail over there.

  The Easter Bunny continues to heave into the bushes, coughing and spitting, as the Tooth Fairy finishes off her bottle of beer and sets it on the ground. When she bends over, I notice that she’s wearing a thong. She comforts the Easter Bunny as he finishes throwing up, then gives him some Chiclets and leads him back inside the fraternity.

  A petite redheaded elf with pointy ears and dressed in a green micro-miniskirt, green leggings, and a low-cut green V-neck T-shirt skips past, looks over at me, and smiles and waves and says, “Hey Santa!” before she skips off into the night.

  “Bro. Did you see that? She’s totally into you.”

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to drink my beer but my beard keeps getting in the way. “That’s why she ran away.”

  I reach up and scratch at my face, then unhook the synthetic white beard from around my ears and shove the beard into my sack of toys, which is really a sack filled with blocks of Styrofoam. Then I take a drink and I wonder if I should lose the wig and the fake plastic belly.

  “Why are you taking off the beard?” asks Nat.

  “Because it itches.”