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Team Out of Joint

“I’ll have a chocolate malt with extra whipped cream,” the teenaged boy said.
    “And I’ll have the banana split,” his date said.
    “Chocolate malted with extra whip and a banana split coming right up,” Johnny said.
    As he got busy he noticed another customer who’d just sat down at the far end of the counter, a scrawny kid around eighteen or nineteen years old with intense dark eyes.  The kid kept staring at him as he went about preparing the orders and before long the unwavering scrutiny started to make him uncomfortable.  When he finished with the lovebirds he walked over to the kid and in a curt tone said, “What’ll it be?”
    “Are you Johnny?” the kid asked, in a surprisingly gruff voice.
    “What of it?”  Johnny said.
    “I hope you don’t mind me calling you Johnny.  People said you wouldn’t mind.”
    “Who’s people?”
    “And I feel as if I know you already.”
“Listen, kid, I got a soda fountain to jockey.  I don’t have time to play games with…”
    “I saw your movie,” the kid said.
    Johnny reflected that if he hadn’t been at work he might have taken a poke at the punk.  It was bad enough that everybody in the picture business wouldn’t let him forget about it, but having to take it from a snot-nosed brat was too much.  He took a deep breath and said, “Do you want something, or don’t you?”
    The punk looked disconcerted.  “I’ll have a C-Coca Cola,” he stammered.
    Johnny brought him his drink and started to walk away.  But before he got too far he heard the punk say, “I loved it.”
    Johnny stopped.  It took a moment for the words to sink in.  Slowly he turned around and faced the kid.
    “I won’t lie to you,” the kid said.  “I know the movie isn’t very good.  But I also know why that is.  It’s because you didn’t have a budget.  But anybody with half a brain could tell that it could have been a masterpiece.  The story you wanted to tell was fantastic.  The ideas knocked my socks off!”
    Johnny walked back and held out his hand.  “Pleased to meet you…?”
    “Phil,” the kid said, and grinned from ear to ear when he shook Johnny’s hand.  “I liked your ideas so much that they’ve caused me to re-examine everything I want to accomplish as a writer.”
    “You’re a pencil-pusher, eh?”
    “Well, not like you, of course.  But I want to be.”
    “What kind of things have you written?”
    “Oh, just stuff.  But I never realized that I might want to write science fiction until you opened my eyes.”
    Just then a group of teens came tearing through the door and made for the empty stools at the counter.  Phil hurriedly said, “Could I have your autograph, Johnny?”
    Nobody had ever asked Johnny for an autograph before.  He scribbled his name on a napkin and went to wait on the new customers.  
    “One more thing,” Phil called after him.  “Could you get Ed to sign something for me too?”
    Johnny frowned.  “Sorry, kid.  But our partnership’s kaput.”
    “What?  But that’s awful!” Phil said.  “What happened?”
    “A dame happened,” Johnny said, and went back to jerking.
    
*     *     *

    He had custody of the Nash that week and at seven sharp he pulled up in front of the Greenberg home near Fairfax.  Miriam was waiting for him on the porch and she came running out to the car.  Johnny got out and held the door open for her and watched her slide across the seat.  He waited until he’d driven a block before leaning over and kissing her.  He had a feeling her parents didn’t approve of him, and he’d made it a point never to kiss her where they might catch them in the act.
    He took her to dinner at Tail o’ the Pup, then out dancing at the USO on Hollywood Boulevard, and finally to the park near her home where they’d wound up after all their dates.  They strolled a little on the graveled path, then sat on one of the benches.  He took one of her hands and held it contentedly while he smoked a cigar.
    “The damnedest thing happened to me today,” he said.
    “Yeah?  Tell me about this damnedest thing.”  That was one of the things he liked about her.  She seemed curious about everything.  Johnny told her about meeting Phil.
    “But that’s wonderful!” Miriam said.  “Your first request for an autograph!”
    “And my last, you can bet on that.  But that’s not the screwy part.  Get this.  He saw the thing…and he liked it!”
    “Oh, come on, Johnny,” she said.  “I wish you’d quit running yourself down over that thing.”
    “Excuse me, Miss, but you’re not allowed an opinion.  You didn’t see it.”
    “It can’t be as bad as you say.  Nothing in the history of mankind could be.  And now you’ve met someone who liked it.  So there.”
    “Well, not exactly.  What he really said was he liked the ideas in it, and he could see how it could’ve been good if we’d had some geetus behind it.”
    “Well, there you go.  Your ideas are good.  Odd, but good.”
    “That’s two people who think so.  And one of ‘em only thinks it because I keep telling her she’s pretty.”
    “Piffle,” she said, but she also grinned.  “You’ve just got to keep getting your work out there, Johnny.  It’s not easy being a nonconformist.”
    “Is that what I am?”
    “Among many other things, yes.”
    Johnny slumped and rested his head on the back of the bench.  “It doesn’t matter, anyway.  I can’t write anything without Ed.  Hell, I can’t even type.”
    “The streets of Hollywood are paved with typists,” she said, “and plenty of them will work for free just for the chance to learn how to do screenplays.  Only promise me one thing.”
    “What’s that?”
    She put her face in his and forced a scowl.  “Hire a man.”
    Johnny laughed, and gave her a peck, but then he sagged again.  “It’s not just the typing.  Ed had that touch for just the right line.  And that way he could pull any fact we needed out of the air.  We were like the Three Musketeers, only without the third one.”
    “Have you heard from him?”
    “Not since we settled up about the Nash.”
    “You will.”
    “I thought so too, at first.  I was sure he’d wise up to that b…to that so-and-so Leona and come crawling back.  But it’s been so long that I don’t know anymore.”
    “You could call him, you know.”
    “Like hell,” Johnny said.
    Miriam changed the subject then.  And although Johnny did his best to keep up with the bright patter she tossed his way, he never did quite recover the sparkle of the evening.  And all too soon it was time to take Miriam back and head home.
    
*     *     *

    Home these days was still the Garden of Edna, but now Johnny was bunking with Horace McCoy.  When Horace had made the offer, he’d been hoping the patch-up with Mrs. McCoy would go more smoothly than it had, and he wouldn’t have to spend quite so many nights in his one-room unit with Johnny snoring on the sofa.  But Johnny was genuinely grateful to be able to stay on at the Edna, and Horace was pleased to do him a good turn.  He was sitting at the dining room table working on his book when Johnny dragged in.
    “How was the big date?” he asked.  
“Fine,” Johnny said.  “Any messages?”
    “Pop called.  Said he had some extra tickets to some event and hoped Chonny was free.”
“Just what I need,” Johnny said.  “A Hollywood event.”
“And that lush Chinaski stumbled by.  Says the boys miss you down at the Whistle.”
    Johnny dug out a pencil and some paper and threw himself on the sofa.  
Every night he jotted down the movie ideas that had come to him during the day.  Today it was the Capone story but with Cubans instead of Italians and a zany musical about dames in prison for killing their boyfriends.  Sometimes the notes opened up to a part of a scene or a line of dialogue, but mostly they just stopped at the first notion.  He didn’t see how anybody could write alone.  How could you get past the first inspiration without a pal there to grab it and start running?  For a few minutes he watched Horace sitting there, scribbling away in apparent satisfaction (on a novel, no less), but he just didn’t get it.  Finally he tossed the paper down, curled up with his back to the light and said, “Night, Horses.”  He was asleep before he even heard Horace wish him goodnight back.

*     *     *

    Somehow Johnny wasn’t in the least surprised when he arrived at the drug store the next day and found Phil seated at the counter.  He couldn’t have said why he wasn’t surprised.  Maybe you could chalk it up to intuition, or something screwy like that.  He waited on a couple of other customers, poured a Coca Cola, and set it down before Phil.  “Hey, kid.”
    “Hi, Johnny,” Phil said with a big smile.  “I’m glad you’re working today.”
    “That makes one of us,” Johnny said.
    “Say, I was thinking.  Are you writing anything these days?”
    Johnny shook his head.
    “Well, I was thinking.  You can tell me to get lost if you want.  But I was thinking.  I get the feeling that you and I think a lot alike.  Do you think maybe, if it isn’t too much of an imposition of course, that we could maybe write something together?”
    The idea of ever writing anything with anybody but Ed had never crossed Johnny’s mind, but suddenly it didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.  It would kill a few hours, anyway.
    “You type?” Johnny said.
    “Well enough.”
    “You spell?”
    “I got A’s in school.”
    “Then why not?” Johnny said.
    Phil grinned from ear to ear.  They made a date to meet at the Edna that evening.
    
*     *     *

    The kid smiled politely when Johnny introduced him to Horace, but it was evident that he’d never heard of any of his books.  “Horses has written a whole bunch of Western and war flicks,” Johnny said.
    “Oh.  That’s…that’s terrific,” Phil said.    
    “What kind of things do you write, Phil?” Horace said.
    “Mostly strange stuff,” Phil said.  
    “Ah, then you and Johnny should get along aces,” Horace said.
    Horace returned to his book.  He’d once told Johnny that he’d first learned how to write during boxing matches and horse races, so nothing could distract him from work.  
    “Is science fiction mostly what you write, Johnny?” Phil asked.
    “Hell no,” Johnny said.  “But I got a warm spot in the old ticker for it.  Ed and I got our first big break with Thrilling Wonder Stories.”
    Phil’s jaw bounced off his Adam’s apple.  “You wrote for Thrilling Wonder?!”
“Something tells me that we’ll be talking science fictiony ideas,” Johnny said with a grin.  “Okay.  Let’s try this one.  Earth is at war with these aliens, see, and this scientist who created a super weapon gets accused of being a gizmo rigged up by the aliens who only looks human.”
“A robot,” Phil said.
Johnny winced.  “I’ve developed kind of an allergy to that word,” he said.  “Can we call it something else?”
Phil frowned in concentration.  “How about simulacrum?  I read that somewhere.”
Horace laughed.  “Johnny can’t even say words with that many syllables!”
“Okay, they think he’s one of those,” Johnny grinned.  “But here’s the switcheroo!  The scientist himself doesn’t know if he’s really human or one of those simu-things who only thinks he’s human!”
    “Wow,” Phil said.  “That’s brilliant, Johnny!  I feel like you’ve just…turned the whole world inside out!  Think about what this implies for the whole concept of identity!  Can we ever really know who we are?”
    “Huh?” Johnny said.
    “Huh?” Horace said.
    “Am I being too screwy?” Phil asked.
    Johnny shook his head.  “Naw, kid.  Far be it from me to think any idea is too screwy.  And I won’t rain all over your parade the way the bosses in this town have rained all over mine.  But maybe we should try another one.”
    “You didn’t like that idea?” Phil asked.
    “I loved it, kid.  But let’s dream up a few and pick the one we like best.”
    “Yeah, good thinking.”
    “Okay,” Johnny said.  “There’s these mind-readers, see, and they’re employed by the cops to stop crimes before they happen!”
    “Oh, my God,” Phil said.  “How do you do it?  My brain feels like it’s on fire!  Just think what your idea implies here.  If people can predict the future, what does that do to the whole concept of free will?”
    “Huh?” Johnny said.
    Horace chuckled.
    “Sorry,” Phil said.  “Maybe I’m going too far afield here.”
    “Don’t worry about it” Johnny said.  “That’s two we have.  Let’s see if we can think up another.”
    They did.  Johnny thought up a dozen more in fact, each embellished by Phil’s unique extrapolations.  Horace went to bed at midnight and they kept right on brainstorming.  At two o’clock Johnny caught himself nodding off.  Phil looked feverishly excited but Johnny had a feeling he was running on fumes, so he told the kid he could spend the night if he didn’t mind sleeping on the floor.  Phil was delighted.  Johnny found an extra blanket and they bedded down.  
Just as he was drifting off, Phil said, “Hey, Johnny.  Where do you get your ideas?”    
    “Hell, I don’t know, kid.  From my noggin, I guess.”
    “Are you sure about that?”
    “Huh?”
    “What I mean to say is…well…your ideas are so original and powerful that I can’t help wondering if you aren’t tapping into some…I don’t know, some primeval source or something.”
    “In English, Phil.”
    “Well, has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’ve tapped the realm of the archetype?  Or some vast living intelligence?  Or even the future itself?”
    “Phil?”
    “Yes, Johnny?”
    “Go the hell to sleep, okay?”
    
*     *     *

    The next day Phil went wherever he went while Johnny went to work.  But at eight o’clock they met back at the Edna and started work on their screenplay.  They’d finally settled that morning on an idea of Johnny’s that was set on Mars and involved mind-tampering and false memories and a woman with three breasts.  Phil wasn’t nearly as fast a typist as Ed, but he was no slouch with the ideas.  They’d barely gotten started when he took off on a wild flight about false memories that turn out to be real memories that are replaced by more false memories that turn out to be more real memories until no one knew what reality was anymore.  
Johnny smiled and played along, even when he didn’t know what the hell Phil was talking about. But as the ideas kept flowing, he started to feel something wrong in the pit of his stomach.  
    “Hey kid,” he said finally.  “Listen.  I don’t think this is fair to you.  I mean, I feel like I’m getting your hopes up for nothing.”
    “What do you mean?” Phil said.  “How is writing a screenplay with my favorite moviemaker nothing?”
    “Phil, I’m a soda jerk.  Not a moviemaker.  Jerker of sodas.  Remember?”  Johnny mimed squeezing a lever with his thumb.  “It was a fluke that Ed and I got that thing made.  Not one of my ideas has ever sold to anybody.”
    “You’re just ahead of your time, that’s all.”
    Johnny laughed.  “Ahead of my time?  By what, a million years?  Come on, kid.  Look at the pictures they make in this town.  How long before they want what I’m selling, even when there’s not a fake Martian memory in sight?  Can you see any producer in the next twenty-five years sinking money into a picture about a male hustler and his friendship with a crippled hobo?  Hell, this town would have to turn upside down before that could happen.  The whole country would!”
    “But it doesn’t matter if people appreciate your ideas now, or even twenty-five years from now,” Phil said.  “All you can do is be true to whatever your imagination is tapping into.  And if enough people do that, maybe everything will change faster than you could ever dream.”
Johnny considered him.  He wanted to knock some sense into the kid, but Phil was so earnest, and so full of naked enthusiasm for every screwy idea they kicked around.  He wasn’t like Ed, a guy you could stand up to and give crap to.  What the hell was Johnny supposed to do?  He wasn’t sure he liked having this much responsibility.
“If you say so,” he said at last.  “Okay, so this milquetoast wakes up on Mars and suddenly he’s a shit-kicker…”
The ideas kept flowing for hours.  Horace reluctantly hit the sack at one, a good hour past his usual bedtime (he’d put aside all pretense of working on his novel and just sat there listening to them spin off lines, his eyes round as saucers), and Johnny suggested they follow his lead.  Phil wanted to press on.
“We’ve only done twenty-one pages,” he said.  “I thought you said you could do double that on a good night.”
“We don’t want to burn out, kid,” Johnny said.  “You’re new at this.”
“It’s because of my slow typing, isn’t it?  I’ll get faster.  I’ll take lessons.”
“It’s not you, kid, it’s me.  Squirting syrup all week takes it out of man.”  He tossed Phil’s bedding onto the floor and went to get his own for the sofa.  When he turned away from the closet he found Phil watching him thoughtfully.
    “What, kid?”
    “I was just wondering.  What was your father like?”
    Johnny looked for the right word.  “Hard,” he said.  “That’s what he was.”
    “I’ve never really known my dad,” Phil said.  “He and my mom split up when I was five.  I mean, I visit him.  I was staying with him in Reno when I saw your movie, in fact.  But I’d just wander downtown, by the casinos and the cheap theaters, because I never knew what to say to him.  Now I’m thinking, what makes someone a father, aside from everyone saying he’s a father?”
    “He could just be a father simu-thing,” Johnny cracked.
    “Maybe true fathers and sons are linked by something more real than the body.  Maybe true parentage is a connection of mind.”
This talk of fathers and sons was making Johnny nervous, and he figured he’d better distract the kid.  “There’s a picture idea for you,” he said as he flopped on the sofa.  “Simu-things who wish they were human and go looking for their creator.”
    “Oh, gosh,” Phil said.  “That’s great.  And why just human-form simulacra?  Maybe science creates artificial pets in the future.  All kinds of animals.  Farm animals, even!”
    At that Johnny just broke up laughing.
    
*     *     *

    Miriam had the day off for Washington’s Birthday, and as soon as Johnny got out of Schwab’s he phoned and asked her to meet him at the park.  The sun was shining, and a delicious scent of spring was in the air.  But it was way too early for spring, even for California, and for a terrible moment Johnny wondered if it was really warm and sunny or if someone had planted false memories in him that made him think it was warm and sunny.  He hurried on to the park.
Miriam had gotten there before him and found them a vacant bench.  She wore a simple blue sun dress with no stockings and sat there with her shoes kicked off, watching kids running around on the grass and old folks feeding pigeons.  She looked awfully cute, Johnny thought, but he couldn’t manage anything more than a kiss on her forehead before he had to get down to it.
    “I need some advice,” he said, and went on to tell her about writing with Phil.  “I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into.”
    “How old is he?”
    “Eighteen, but that’s not the problem.  He’s really smart for his age.  He’s just the strangest duck on the planet.  Maybe he could make it writing for the science fiction rags, but in this burg they won’t know what to do with him.  They’ll stomp all over him.  And me with him.”
    “You’re being too hard on yourself again.  This script can’t be that strange.”
    Johnny snorted.  “Trust me.  My Exterminator idea looks like a watered-down version of the some of the stuff he’s coming up with.”
    “Johnny, if you don’t want to write with him, you should just end it.”
    “It’s not just me,” Johnny said.  “This kid needs somebody who can keep him on track, not another screwball who’ll…”
    “Johnny.  He’s young.  He’ll get over it.”
    Johnny turned and looked at her.  “You think so?”
    “It’s better than stringing him along.”
    “Yeah,” Johnny said.  “Yeah.  I’ll just tell him I need a break from writing.  Gotta concentrate on my banana-slicing skills.”  Then Johnny’s eyes went hollow.  “But cripes.  If I tell him to take a hike, where does that leave me?”
    Miriam reached over and rubbed his back.  
    
*     *     *

    Johnny was a wreck waiting for Phil to arrive.  It would have helped to run his dilemma past Horace, but his bunkmate was spending the holiday with his wife and daughter.  He paced and smoked a cigar and stared at the clock.  At eight sharp there came a knock at the door.
    The first thought Johnny had when he opened the door was that Phil, with that uncanny brain of his, had sensed that Johnny was about to give him his walking papers.  The kid looked distraught as hell.  But then he opened his mouth and surprised the bejesus out of Johnny.
    “You’re going to hate me, Johnny.  I’ve got to go home.”
    “Home?  I thought you lived around here somewhere.”
    “No.  I live up in Berkeley.  I only came to Los Angeles to meet you.”
    “To meet me?”
    “But my mother says I have to come home and finish school.  I just started college in September.  I think I’ll learn a lot more working with you, but…”
“Uh-uh, kid.  Listen to your Mama.  I might not be jerking soda today if I’d stayed in school past the eighth grade.”
    “Then you’re not mad?”
    “You don’t know how not mad I am, Phil.”
    “Gee, that’s swell, Johnny!  Do you think maybe we can finish our screenplay through the mail?”
    “Uh…I’m afraid not, kid.  I can’t work that way.  I need that face-to-face.  Read me?”
    “I read you, Johnny.  Do you think you’ll finish it alone?”
    Johnny shook his head.  “I’ll tell you what.  You take the screenplay and finish it yourself.  But let me give you a word of advice.  Turn it into a story.  Sell it to the pulps.  Believe me, kid, I think you got a real future in science fiction.”
    “Gosh, Johnny.  That’s the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.”
    “Well, don’t start bawling, for God’s sake!  I’m not doing anything for you.  You’re going to have to do it all for yourself.”
    Phil took a deep breath and got hold of himself.  “I’ll never forget you, Johnny.  Or what you’ve taught me.”  He stuck out a paw.
    Johnny shook it.  Then he gathered up the screenplay and handed it over.  Phil just looked at it in his hands for a moment, then he turned his big eyes intently on Johnny.  “Remember, Johnny,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter if people get it yet.  What matters is what your mind can see.”
    “I’ll remember, kid,” Johnny said.  He watched Phil go, waving one more time when Phil turned to wave at him, then he closed the door and found himself back in reality.  Such as it was.