God in a Box

Copyright © 2012 Darren Smith

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-4673-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-4674-6 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 2/24/2012

Contents

The Past

New York City

Interstate 78

New Hope/Lambertville

Interstate 76

Pleasant Grove

Dayton

I-70

Kansas City

Manhattan

Lebanon

Interstate 80

Loveland

Eagle

San Juan

I-70

St George

Mesquite

St George

I-15

Las Vegas

ZZYZX

South El Monte

Pasadena

South El Monte

Beverly Hills

South El Monte

With special thanks to the reading group

Andy

Anoushka

Colleen

David

Elisabeth

Françoise

Injerd

Justin

Mum

A recent Harris Poll survey

revealed that 69% of

Americans interviewed

did not want to be famous.

At the time of writing,

that still leaves 90 million

others who are quite mad.

The Past

Do you remember the teen movie you saw at two a.m. the other morning? Maybe you were stoned. I know I was. Maybe you suffer from insomnia. I know I do. But enough of me for the time being.

In the movie you saw a group of high school kids from different backgrounds and cultures, for some reason speaking like the story’s 40 year old middle class writer, forced together in one social situation or another. I’m thinking a Saturday detention, the prom, a road trip, summer camp, a natural disaster, or an international spelling bee. You take your pick, they made them all.

Do you remember that there was the preppy kid, a hunk who would inevitably rebel against his snobby parents and snotty friends? The actor playing him was Ricky Holmes.

Ricky has his own show on Comedy Central now, playing the brow-beaten father of twin misfits. He makes on average one movie a year, or at least he had for the last twenty. But looking through his filmography there are few of note and nothing special: an animated movie where the animals have celebrity voices, a Christmas special with an important message, how dull.

The rich kid would be after a pretty girl from the wrong side of the tracks, one who scrubbed up well and was innocent, or gullible, enough not to hate those who persecuted her. Charlie Summer was fortunate enough to ordinarily be cast as her.

Charlie was doing ok too the last I read. She has played lead in the West End and is getting her life together again the other side of the Atlantic. She was out of it for a while with drink and drugs. But then again, who wasn’t? She even made a few soft core porno movies in the mid-nineties. I don’t judge her though, as I owned them all on VHS, and have since burned them to DVD.

Nick Andersen played the well-meaning jock who was sweet and caring, who acted out for his locker room buddies but deep down really did love the slutty rich girl or the misunderstood mute Goth his character fell for. Nick was an asshole in person and a pretentious prick. He still is and has pissed off so many producers he has to pony up the dough himself to appear on the silver screen.

His latest thing is to make overly patriotic war movies about machine-gun toting, muscle-bound Neanderthals saving small Asian peasant villages of tiny doe-eyed orphans from evil European mercenaries. I think he is up to the fifth or sixth sequel of this venture.

Either the slut or the Goth mute was played ably by Heather Loughlin; A raven haired beauty that the makeup girls adored. In 1989 she quit the business and settled down with an accountant to raise a family in Pennsylvania. I think I saw her on daytime television the other day talking breast feeding and nipple pads as if she had never been the fantasy of every pubescent boy in America.

And then there was the geek. The brain of the outfit. He was from an average income family, who all pinned their hopes on him being the first family member to go to college. He had problems, big issues with failure as well as under-developed social skills. He may, or may not, have been best friends with any of the other characters.

Ordinarily he was in (unrequited) love for a girl that wouldn’t know until the climactic scene, normally at a pool party attended by the whole school, or the prom. He was the character people forgot, the character people didn’t want to get the girl. And that character was me.

For seven years and eighteen movies — all written and directed by my mentor Robert Cowley — I was Brian, Kevin and Sammy, Lloyd and Lewis. And what accolades did I receive, pray tell? How did my career pan out? Six Golden Globes? Numerous Oscar nominations? My own miniseries on HBO? Do you think I would be serving you your dinner tonight if I had more than my fifteen minutes of fame?

New York City

Robert Cowley is dead. Chest pains in the middle of the night turned out to be something a little more serious than indigestion brought on by his steak supper at The Palm. He died in the arms of his latest fling, a nineteen year old linebacker from San Diego State University with aspirations to act.

It made the national news and thus I had to do the unthinkable and turn up the volume of the battered RCA Victor in the kitchen, a feat normally only attempted in the deciding game of the World Series; and then only if the Yankees had taken to the field, and had an insurmountable lead.

His funeral was to be held ten days later at his Beverly Hills estate; an open casket affair with the big wigs of Hollywood kneeling side by side in prayer for their fallen comrade. It was to be an invitational. Only a select few would be there, the great and good from Tinseltown, the precious and the powerful, the Hollywood Skull and Bones, so to speak, so you will appreciate my surprise when I received the gold lettered envelope requesting that I attend.

I asked my boss, Big Mike, the chef and owner of the greasy restaurant I worked at on Bleecker Street, Manhattan, whether I could take a week off to drive across the country. He was, as ever, sympathetic to his employee’s needs.

You wanna fuckin’ disappear for a week? You wanna do that, let me tell ya, you disappear for good when I get my hands on ya, I swear it, on my mother’s heart.

I had asked him for an advance on my salary first, so I could fly to LAX and only need take two days. That had been met with even less enthusiasm.

Airline tickets? Fuckin’ airline tickets! Do I look like I’m made of money, you washed up nobody fuck? Now get outta my kitchen before I crack your skull.

He had been tenderizing low grade veal for an age old family recipe he forced on tourists and New York food aficionados alike. He still had the spiked wooden mallet in his hand as he advanced, edging me out of the kitchen and into the seated area of the restaurant.

The rest of the day I kept away from Big Mike, ever aware of his glaring eyes and throaty growl whenever I chanced a glance in his direction. He reminded me a lot of my dog Irving the day after I took him to the veterinarian to have his balls removed and Nuticles fitted. Irving would slowly walk, reminiscent of John Wayne, around my apartment growling at the ache between his hind legs, then snap at me if I got anywhere near him.

Twenty, twenty five, fifty, sixty, seventy, two. Helen was counting the tips as I swept up come closing time. We split the spoils of the day right down the middle; twenty-five percent for Helen, twenty-five percent for me and fifty for the grumbling chef.

Twenty-five seventy-two, Max, I’ll leave it here. She called over to me and pointed at the meager contents of the tip tray.

Sure, Helen, thanks. Have a good night. I waved as she left and then started sweeping the dark half of the restaurant.

Big Mike did not want to waste electricity when we were closed to the public so he put timers on the lights. At eleven, half the restaurant was plunged into darkness. All patrons should have gone by then, and you had half an hour to clean, sweep and polish, count up and stand chairs on tables before pitch blackness reigned supreme.

If you were slow you had to finish up by flashlight, blundering around the tables and knocking things over. I had given up on that practice after several run-ins with the NYPD and instead had become quite good at what I dubbed ‘night sweeping’, something I sang to the tune of REM. I could probably clean up the place blindfolded.

Twenty-five seventy-two would not go far in New York City. Indeed, a pint of MacSorley’s and a Philly cheesesteak later, I was counting loose change. Shrapnel, as my dear old dad called it.

The tip sharing idea worked quite well for us all. Helen for starters, was a cute blonde girl. A petite singer, not that anyone cared, starring on open mic nights in the West Village, not that anyone’s lips were on the nipple of that particular zeitgeist. Twenty one was far too young for me, but her flirting worked well with groups of guys and she pulled in quite a bit of money. Then there was the phenomenon of my fame, or rather, my infamy.

Some people recognized me off the bat, most didn’t, some needed prompting. Those that did would mostly whisper to each other, others would ask questions outright.

Aren’t you Kevin Holness?

To which I would have to answer:

No, sir, I am not Kevin Holness. I spoke as a nerd, an homage to my typecasting. Kevin Holness is merely a fictional character from the 1986 teen movie Nowhere Summer starring Heather Loughlin, Adam James and Max Hammond.

They would then apologize, but agree, to a man, that I was indeed the spitting image of Kevin Holness. I would graciously accept their apology as I got it all the time then take their order.

Sometimes, however, either the party would include a movie geek who may have looked up the fact I worked there on the Internet, or Big Mike would bellow: Hey, Max, stop gabbing about your failed fuckin’ movie career and clear station six. It’s what I pays ya for.

That would cause laughter, hysterics at times, personal questions and photo opportunities, sometimes commiseration and twenty dollar tips. Tips I hasten to add that were for me and me alone, tips that, at the end of the day, were shared equally and fairly; twenty-five percent for Helen, twenty-five percent for me and fifty percent for Big Mike.

On my block, in my lower East Side neighborhood, not the cool Lower East Side, a little lower than that, a little further east, people did not own cars. In fact there were only six parked at any time and two of them were never going to move. One, a Honda Civic that once belonged to the Pace students who lived in the apartment below mine, had been broken into, stripped of anything of worth, and now acted as a play area for the street’s children, as well as a place to throw poop bags after scooping your lapdog’s mess off the sidewalk. These two facts, when combined, caused the neighborhood mothers to be furious at their children. You would hear screams of oh, my god! and get those clothes into the wash now! come darkness, when the streets cleared.

The other car was a mystery to most, and got around New York’s alternate side parking laws by being in a square lot, barely the size of the vehicle, just off the curb. It was a huge monstrous hulk under a dirty gray tarpaulin. The cover was always over it and no one but no one had been seen working under the hood. I had lived in the neighborhood for fifteen years and not once had the oil been changed or the tire pressure checked. Why was this? It was because the owner, a certain Sable Goss, had not left her apartment in that time. She never stepped out of her doorway to join the carolers at Christmas; or rushed out onto the street with the rest of the building when the apartment below her loft had caught fire: My apartment. She was a ‘shut in’ as they call them. And now, as the only real means of getting to Robert’s funeral, I stood at her door ready to knock.

Sable Goss and I were linked in one of those Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon ways. We had very similar stories that had crossed thrice. Once when I moved into the apartment beneath her and noted her name on the buzzer, now, as I stood ready to ask for her car keys, and twenty two years ago when her band ‘The Dockettes’ sang the teen anthem over the credits of one of my more successful outings as ‘the geek with the heart of gold’.

The Dockettes had gone their separate ways after four albums, a suspiciously named best of compilation and two failed come back tours, several years earlier, that had scared her into hiding.

Jett Black, the guitarist, had a number of cameos as a mother or teacher in the teen movies of the generation after mine, a few solo hits in the Latin charts and judged a facile and oxymoronic talent show on ABC before disappearing into the desert.

Jupiter Love, the bassist now managed three thrift store suit wearing bands out of Oakland. The kind of bands where everyone looked and sounded the same, and were therefore interchangeable. You looked at the record sleeves, all had shaggy mops and sideburns, all wore overly large sunglasses and tight retro shirts under pin stripe blazers and skinny hipster jeans. I like the music, to be honest. Guitar oriented pop reminded me of my younger days and watching my movies, listening to the teen soundtracks from the time.

The drummer, whose surname escapes me, Keila Somethingorother, is now in prison in New Mexico for shooting her husband and two children to death after an endocet episode. So I guess Sable didn’t have it the worse out of the band after all.

As per Revelations I stood at the door and knocked. Knock-knock-knock. I knocked again, stepping back into the small hallway outside her front door. From my floor a narrow staircase led up to her loft, the landing no more than six feet long, leaving me therefore precariously balanced on the top step waiting for the ‘open sesame’ moment.

I checked my watch.

There was a faint shuffling, the slow scrape of feet dragged on bare wood floors, rather than lifted, a zombie shuffle, closer and closer until the sound was the other side of the door. I strained to listen as a series of locks were slowly slid across, and a key turned, before the door opened a crack, just enough for a dark eye to peek out.

I angled my head to be in the field of vision and smiled. Hi. Hi there, I’m Max.

The door was closed, my entrance blocked, but I heard no movement away so knocked again and waited. After a pause of a few minutes the door opened again and, once more, the eye was trained on me.

Hi. Again. I’m Max from 12J. I pointed to the floor. It’s Sable, isn’t it? We may have met at the-

The door was closed again and I let out a sigh, looking up at the damp spotted ceiling, and considered hulking my loose change filled Melchior to the nearest Coinstar in a laundry cart. The miraculous machine that changed metal discs to paper money was in the lobby of the CVS on Avenue C and was often out of order. The nearest after that was at the HSBC on Fourteenth and A at the south west corner of Stuy Town. From there, depending on which one was working, I would need to head to the National car hire office a few blocks over. I could probably afford a compact for the week, if my estimation of the bottle’s content was accurate. It was doable, but not ideal, so I knocked a third time, and again the eye was on me.

Please, I spoke softly and held my palms exposed and low, I need to talk to you. The door wavered, the eye glanced back inside. It’s important. That last bit smacked of desperation and I think it struck a nerve as the gap was opened a further six inches.

I had heard stories about Sable, but nothing substantiated. Rumour had it that an overdose messed with her mind so badly she could not tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Such nonsense should be banished to the pages of the National Enquirer though, so I kept an open mind.

She was gaunt, mouth a little agape, eyes heavy, bagged, and never on me. Her hair a mess of tangles and pins. There was a natural beauty about her, her skin, though pale, was slightly olive, her eyes rich and dark, her hair glossy and full.

We stood there in limbo and I waited for a full minute before continuing my one-way conversation.

I need to ask a favor, and have no one else who can help. This much was true, most of the New York wannabes were too poor to own a car, or were from the city, so never learned to drive.

I need your car. Her eyes flickered and she turned to bolt back into the room. No, I pointed gently at her, I need you and your car.

No response.

A friend, a dear friend to me, died in Los Angeles and I need to go to his funeral in a week. Her expression slumped from morning stares to petrified in a second. I need your help to do this.

Nothing.

I’d share the driving, pay for gas and hotels on the way, all food. You, her eyes were lowered again, would not be out of pocket at all.

Non-committal as she clearly was, it caused me to think a little about what I was asking, and exposed a chink in my armor, a flaw in my plan, and an air of doubt that was all-consuming. Maybe I should not go, it would be a media free-for-all, a shit storm of press, and celebrities, all clamoring over me like weevils on cheese. If, indeed, and wonders will never cease, they recognized me after all these years.

Maybe you’re right. I felt tearful and a little embarrassed. Maybe I am not convinced I should even go. I am not 100% sold on the idea. But if I did- I looked up and she was gone from the crack in the doorway. Was this an invite?

I moved slowly toward it, hand out in front of me, ready to help it in its arc out and into apartment 14, the residence being the penthouse and therefore the only one on this floor, meaning it did not need a letter suffix. Closer I moved but, just as I reached the lacquered wood, she appeared, startling me back a pace.

Hi. I smiled.

She nodded and reached out a hand. Between her fingers she held a card, on it her number. I took it.

You want me to? I held a pinkie finger to my mouth and thumb to my ear, the classic ‘phone me’ hand signal.

She nodded.

If I am 100%, that is?

She nodded again, eyes already lowered, turning back to the room and closing the door as I called out, thank you, before being left alone on the landing, with nothing else to do than go to work.

Helen was working the late shift that day so I took the lunchtime and early evening slot, shared with miserable wannabe Daniel Bliss. Daniel said he was my friend the first time we met, after the penny dropping moment of who I used to be. He seemed to be of the opinion that I could assist in his career one way or another. It’s not always how good you are in this business, and Daniel was pretty talented, but who you know, and I know a lot people.

He had this way of talking to you that made you feel stupid and small. I would, for example, share something about my life as part of a conversation, to, for the most part, back up what he was saying. He would snap, though, and tell me to shut up, and belittle my opinion, saying it was out-dated or wrong. Despite this, he was my second choice on my cross-country drive, and would rip a guy’s arm off for the chance of hobnobbing with the kind of glitterati that would be faking emotion at the grave side.

It was his birthday that day, and I was invited, as always, to the party he was throwing at his West Village walk-up. There would be about thirty people there and to a man they would know my story. Though, I am happy to say, that my fall from favor was no longer the cause célèbre.

I found him wrapping cutlery in red napkins before the lunchtime rush. He was a tall man, handsome in that Jewish way, a true New Yorker hailing from Brooklyn. His headshot was pinned to noticeboards across the theatre district, and according to his resume he could pull off Italian, Spanish, South American, Jewish, you name it. He wore ‘the uniform’, as everyone called it, but he claimed to have originally coined: black pants, skinny black shirt, on this occasion with short sleeves, black belt, and pink Dior flip-flops.

Hey Dan. I took up a handful of knives and forks to help. He was muttering something under his breath, a near silent mantra. I need to ask you something.

Fuck! He angrily stared me down. You made me lose count.

I rolled a napkin around a set and held it for him to take. You don’t need to count.

Not these, he snipped, you imbecile. He threw the rest into the tray. These? These? Why would I wanna count these? I shrugged. He poked his temple violently. I was doing the math in my head for tonight, going over the shopping list.

The party? I nodded.

Yeah. He growled.

I’m sorry. He always made me feel an inch tall. I’ll let you get on with it.

Actually, his voice changed in a wing beat to a bluebird on the breeze, a clear sign he was about to use me, I need you to do two things for me.

Sure. Was my normal answer, so why bother going against form? Whatever you want.

First, he dropped his voice and looked to make sure no one was listening, Chef doesn’t know I’m leaving early.

You’re leaving early? I questioned, only to be shushed with a hissing spit.

Yes, I’m leaving early to get ready for tonight. So I need you to come up with an excuse for me.

I nodded.

I also need you to pick up a few things when you leave here. I frowned. I normally bought him a gift, mostly movie memorabilia, and was having a strip of original cells from his favorite movie ‘Withnail and I’ mounted and framed under a signature card signed by the stars.

But I-

Then he softened his voice more and stepped to me, until we were chest to chest. It will be your gift to me, Max.

Okay. I smiled. I could always give him the cells for Christmas.

I need two bottles of gin, two of tequila, get something good, and ice, lots of ice. When will you be able to get them to me?

I have to work.

I know you have to fucking work, Max. I know you do.

Six, I looked around, six-thirty?

You can’t do earlier? He was disappointed.

No. I whined.

Fine. He stomped off to meet the first diners of the day, after turning to me with a finger point. Don’t fuck this up.

You would be amazed at the number of times I heard that phrase growing up, and then in the early days of my career, not so much on camera as off. I had a habit of saying the wrong kinds of things into the right sorts of ear to cause me strife. Entertainment journalists are a species put on this planet by God to gloat at the descent from grace of those who have spent their whole lives trying to live the dream. They are parasites effectively, who would rather report the bad than the good, tickling the funny bone of