Remake

I waggled my finger at her. “Give you a little advice. ‘Don’t want what you can’t have.’ Michael J. Fox, For Love or Money. Bar scene, party, nightclub, three bottles of champagne. Only not anymore. Yours truly has done his job. Right down the sink.”

I swung my arm to demonstrate, like James Mason in A Star Is Born, and the chairs went over.

“You’re splatted,” she said.

“ ‘Nope.’ ” I grinned. “Gary Cooper in The Plainsman.” I walked toward her. “Not splatted. Boiled, pickled, soused, sozzled. In a word, drunk as a skunk. It’s a Hollywood tradition. Do you know how many movies have drinking in them? All. Except the ones I’ve taken it out of. Dark Victory, Citizen Kane, Little Miss Marker. Westerns, gangster movies, weepers. It’s in all of them. Every one. Even Broadway Melody of 1940. Do you know why Fred got to dance the Beguine with Eleanor? Because George Murphy was too tanked up to go on. Forget dancing,” I said, making another sweeping gesture that nearly hit her. “What you need to do is have a drink.”

I tried to hand her the bottle.

She took another protective step toward the monitor. “You’re drunk.”

“Bingo,” I said. “ ‘Very drunk indeed,’ as Audrey Hepburn would say. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A movie with a happy ending.”

“Why’d you come here?” she said. “What is it you want?”

I took a swig out of the bottle, remembered it was empty, and looked at it sadly. “Came to tell you the movies aren’t real life. Just because you want something doesn’t mean you can have it. Came to tell you to go home before they remake you. Audrey should’ve gone home to Tulip, Texas. Came to tell you to go home to Carval.” I waited, swaying, for her to get the reference.

“Andy Hardy Has Too Much to Drink,” she said. “He’s the one who needs to go home.”

The screen faded to black for a few frames, and then I was sitting halfway down the steps, with Alis leaning over me. “Are you all right?” she said, and tears were glimmering in her eyes like stars.

“I’m fine,” I said. “ ‘Alcohol is the great level-el-ler,’ as Jimmy Stewart would say. Need to pour some on these steps.”

“I don’t think you should take the skids in your condition,” she said.

“We’re all on the skids,” I said. “Only place left.”

“Tom,” she said, and there was another fade to black, and Fred and Ginger were on both walls, sipping martinis by the pool.

“That’ll have to go,” I said. “Have to send the message ‘We care.’ Gotta sober Jimmy Stewart up. So what if it’s the only way he can get up the courage to tell her what he really thinks? See, he knows she’s too good for him. He knows he can’t have her. He has to get drunk. Only way he can ever tell her he’s in love with her.”

I put out my hand to her hair. “How do you do that?” I said. “That backlighting thing?”

“Tom,” she said.

I let my hand drop. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll ruin it in the remake. Not real anyway.”

I waved my hand grandly at the screen like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. “All a ’lusion. Makeup and wigs and fake sets. Even Tara. Just a false front. FX and foleys.”

“I think you’d better sit down,” Alis said, taking hold of my arm.

I shook it off. “Even Fred. Not the real thing at all. All those taps were dubbed in afterwards, and they aren’t really stars. In the floor. It’s all done with mirrors.”

I lurched toward the wall. “Only it’s not even a mirror. You can put your hand right through it.”

After which things went to montage. I remember trying to get out at Forest Lawn to see where Holly Golightly was buried and Alis yanking on my arm and crying big jellied tears like the ones in Vincent’s program. And something about the station sign beeping Beguine, and then we were back in my room, which looked funny, the arrays were on the wrong side of the room, and they all showed Fred carrying Eleanor over to the pool, and I said, “You know why the musical kicked off? Not enough drinking. Except Judy Garland,” and Alis said, “Is he splatted?” and then answered herself, “No, he’s drunk.” And I said, “ ‘I don’t want you to think I have a drinking problem. I can quit anytime. I just don’t want to,’ ” and waited, grinning foolishly, for the two of them to get the reference, but they didn’t. “Some Like It Hot, Marilyn Monroe,” I said, and began to cry thick, oily tears. “Poor Marilyn.”