Short Story
THE REAL McKAY
by
Andrew Harold Morton
I phoned Jarvis immediately. He was sympathetic but resigned to the realities.Jarvis Throttle called down the stairs, "Mind the banister, darling. It's been loose for a hundred and fifty years. We had a man to look at it but he never came back."
His office resembled the contents of a badly organised filing cabinet. Throttle's desk was barely discernible beneath years of old telephone and trade directories; the walls were lined with bulging manila folders which dripped the occasional faded sheet onto the floor - a process of decay geological in its time-scale.
As I stood on the threshold, a sheet seesawed down to my feet. At first sight, it seemed hardly worthy of attention, but when I bent to pick it up, I was awed and horrified to read: "Loot - by Joe Orton - first draft".
"What've you got there?" asked Jarvis.
I handed him the sheet.
"Oh, God," he said, and his voice briefly cracked to indicate anxiety. Snatching the priceless paper, he stuffed it, apparently at random, into the nearest folder. Consistent with the laws of karma, another sheet floated unheeded to the ground.
"I really must remonstrate with Cravatte," he said by way of apology for the chaos. "You've met Dolly, I believe?"
I had spoken to the Cockney factotum several times on the Throttle and Spinx switchboard.
"Well, I'm afraid she's letting things slide on the domestic front."
In the ten years I had been dealing with Jarvis Throttle, we had communicated solely by telephone, so I was curious to meet him in the flesh. He had managed to place some of my short fiction in prestigious but small-circulation literary magazines, the kind that languish on the shelves of Waterstone's coffee bar for a month before being pulped. I had no great ambitions as a writer, but the occasional publication served to justify my position as lecturer in creative writing at the unfortunately named County University of Newark on Trent. Throttle and Spinks, Literary and Theatrical Agents (founded 1831) operated from the top floor of a building in St Martins Lane, the street that runs up from Trafalgar Square into the heart of London's theatre-land. Superficially, the office seemed fossilised in the 1950s,a land of damp afternoons and hissing gas fires, but everyone knew that Jarvis Throttle, despite his eccentricities, had discovered several major writing talents over the last forty years. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself among the wolf pack of the more aggressive contemporary agencies, a fact attested to by the bright lights of at least two theatres across the lane. He was absurdly small, and his light blond hair grew in asymmetrical tufts. Someone had told him to "go lighter" - generally good advice unless taken to extremes. With his chinless face and elfin ears, he was a perfect visual representation of the clipped tones of the English upper middle classes. Jarvis Throttle was truly the last of a great literary dynasty, but he had proved a reassuring guide and mentor to me.
A few months previously I had posted Jarvis a copy of my original screenplay "Paris Days", but the subsequent phone call was hardly encouraging.
"A speculative screenplay, my love, is pissing in the wind. No one wants to know, I have to warn you."
"Perhaps I should try elsewhere?"
"Andrew," he protested, "I'd be absolutely delighted to read it, but I can't promise I'll be able to do anything with it."
And that was that. Until one day, engaged in the most mundane of tasks - checking a handful of suspiciously good essays for Internet plagiarism - the call came from Throttle and Spinks. Jarvis was mysterious, but vaguely encouraging as he invited me down to London to discuss "Paris Days". It was complicated, he said and needed a conversation to clarify the situation.
He shook a small hand-bell on his desk and motioned me to sit. Presently Cravatte sailed into the room with tea and biscuits.
"Thank you, Dolly. Any calls this morning?"
"Mr Randall called twice."
"Oh dear. I suppose he wanted to know why I hadn't returned his call?"
"Exactly. I made so bold as to say you wasn't so keen on another Greek tragedy set in Stoke on Trent."
They both giggled hysterically.
"Mrs Cravatte is my jackal-headed goddess at the gates of the underworld, aren't you, my dear?"
"Whatever you say, sir."
"She protects me from the unsolicited telephone call."
"I can hold my own on the blower," she said with just a hint of sauciness.
"First the good news," said Jarvis, getting down to business. "Francis Gonzola wants to option your screenplay. We haven't sorted the detail yet, but you can expect to "collect more than two hundred pounds before you pass go.""
"So he liked the script?"
"I'll come to that in a moment. The fact is, I bumped into the actor Austin Harrison at the launch of Irene La Bamba's "memoir". With a little arm-twisting I got him to read the play and he thinks your character...remind me..." "Tom O'Dowd..."
"That's the one--he thinks it was written for him. With Harrison on board, Gonzola was keen to option your script." My head was spinning until a little objection occurred to me.
"But Harrison is American and he must be over sixty. My character is a down-at-heel schoolteacher from South London, aged thirty-two."
"He's an actor, darling. Actors can do accents. That's what they're paid for. Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn't let such trifling objections get in the way at this stage. What has happened is little short of a miracle so don't rock the boat. Which brings me to part two of this conversation."
Suddenly he sounded a little ominous.
"Gonzola does like the script, but he feels you need a little professional help in polishing it up. In the next few days, you will be contacted by a man called Webster McKay. He's quite famous it seems - lectures all over the world on film theory. Gonzola wants you to work with him."
Two days later, Webster emailed me at home. He didn't beat about the bush. Certain phrases from the original seventeen-page document are still branded on my memory:Andy - Hi
Have read your script which at almost every turn shows signs of promise.
However, I am not enamoured of your high-flown poetic style.
The truth is you hardly know how to write English using too many gerunds instead of the present tense.
Of your ninety-page script, sixty pages are almost total junk.
You pay almost no attention to the basic rules of scriptwriting. I counted 42 examples of the incorrect use of dashes in slug-lines.
Your dialogue is flabby and self-indulgent.
The mythic content is only partly visible above the useless verbiage. Most importantly, we do not meet the antagonist until page twenty-five. This is much too late.
"They do things differently," he said. "Americans often have no idea how rude they can be. Of course, we had them on the run in '63, but for the last thirty years, they've been constructing an incomprehensible fortress of literary theory about screen writing. It's all nonsense of course, but it's big business over there and you'll have to go along with it."
Taking a copy of "Paris Days" with me on the plane to Los Angeles, I made sure the slug-lines were in "proper format". I also tinkered with the dialogue, trying to make it more terse and Hemingwayesque, changed all the present continuous verbs to present simple and attempted a general defoliation of adjectives. I even followed Bill Gates' advice and changed all my passive constructions to active. On the whole, though, I remained unrepentant about the script and clung onto my $20,000 optioning fee as evidence of its basic merit. "Paris Days" is a kind of dark romantic comedy, a cross between "The Accidental Tourist "and "Sleepless in Seattle", if that's possible, in which Tom O'Dowd, a psychological bombsite of a character, a downtrodden schoolteacher who has exchanged his musical career for alcoholic mediocrity, finds himself caught up in a web of intrigue concerning Regine, a Jungian analyst, her delinquent teenage daughter and absolute bastard of an art-dealer husband, Konrad. It was a good story, though I have to admit difficulty in reducing it to a 200-word synopsis.
Soon after I had settled in at the Hyatt, I had a phone call from Webster. I was to meet him in a bar in Silverlake called the Rikki Tiki.
"Right you are, Webster, I'm at the Hyatt now. Can I get there walking from here?"
"Get a cab, man."
"Of course." I had forgotten that no one in America has legs.
"But how will I recognise you?"
"Don't worry about that. I'll recognise you."
Perhaps he had a picture of me from the Gonzola Corporation.
I chose a light sports jacket and some comfortable flannels to wear. It was scorching outside, so sandals seemed the order of the day. With my battered briefcase, a pair of Boots sunglasses and a Panama hat, I hoped to pass for a native. The cabby, who spoke with a thick Russian accent, seemed to know enough about LA to think that I was straying into dangerous territory.
" You sure you want to go there?" he asked.
"I'm supposed to meet a business connection there," I said.
He shook his head. "You got the wrong place. Either that or you got the wrong business."
My initial impression of the Rikki Tiki tended to confirm his misgivings.
The bar contrived to be garish and dingy at the same time, the block concrete walls sporting an inadequate coat of washed out turquoise, and the walls cluttered with ethnic artefacts of the Polynesian variety. Chairs were at a premium and the clientele felt fractious and edgy as they stood and shouted at each other in clouds of smoke. As I crossed the room and craned my neck around nonchalantly looking someone resembling a Webster, a sinister hush descended. Then someone said:
"Hey, it's William fucking Burroughs!" and an outbreak of forced hilarity only partly dispelled the tension.
In one corner a collection of grotesque masks caught my attention and then one of the masks moved. It was of a man in his late twenties, his long black hair tied back with a bandanna and the rest of his face obscured by Ray Bans and a semi-successful goatee beard. The apparition beckoned me over and spoke to the small brown man in a Hawaiian shirt who sat next to him on the only other visible seat:
"Rikki, I believe I've heard enough of your shit for one day. Kindly shift your butt and make room for this gentleman from England. While you're at it, you can bring us a couple of Princess Popaloopacooies."
Pleasantries over, Webster got straight down to business.
"Frankly, you limeys make me want to puke, if you know what I mean. I've seen it many times. You come over here with your Hugh Grant accents and your fagotty literary fucking style that belongs in the age of Jane Austen and you think you can write screenplays. You don't make my job easy."
"I'm sure you're right, Webster. I'm here to learn."
"And that's another thing that makes me pissed. You're so fucking polite all the time. You think life is some frigging tea-party at Buckingham Palace."
"Sorry."
"There you go again!"
"Look, I've made a few changes to the script in line with your suggestions," I said, and handed over the new version.
"I cannot read this script."
"Why not?"
Rikki appeared with a couple of drinks. They were a cloudy green colour like some luminescent toilet cleaning fluid. Webster knocked his back and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his biker jacket.
"Tastes like shit!"
"It is an odd taste," I agreed.
"Only odd if you don't know what those fuckers put in it," was his rejoinder. "Rikki!" The small brown man reappeared. "Dispose of this, would you," he said and handed Rikki my script.
"I have something for you," said Webster and handed me another script.
I read the title page: "Die, You Bastard!" - by Ludlow Spiers."
"End of interview," he said. "You take this away and read it by tomorrow. I want you to tell me why this script is arguably the most brilliant piece of screenwriting in the last ten years and your script "Paris Days" "- he delivered the words with the mincing intonation of a Valley girl " - is totally a heap of shit. I'll phone you at noon tomorrow to tell you where to meet me."
McKay's forthright appraisal of my work served to spur me into action. There was nothing for it but to bite the bullet. Much as I resented McKay's rudeness, I had to recognise that this was Hollywood, far removed from the polite backwaters of English literary life. The Rikki Tiki experience had left me slightly wary of seeking out more nightlife in the city, and from a British point of view, the outlook from the twentieth storey of the Hyatt held a certain romance.
The exact nature of "Die, You Bastard!", accredited masterpiece of screen writing, eluded me for some time. I did note the classic simplicity of the dialogue, which explored the syntactical versatility of the "F" word in some depth. The action writing certainly left one breathless, notching up the body count at an alarming rate; every page dripped with blood and every mouth with obscenity when it was not stopped by a portion of another character's anatomy. I had to read the script several times until I got the gist of the story, which seemed pretty much in the Mafia mayhem mould. An elderly mobster and widower Freddy Frattorini, has one lovely daughter, Precious, but is forced to marry Queen bitch Gloria Guacamole to cement a tribal relationship. When Precious' life is threatened by Gloria, she goes on the road, and is eventually adopted as an honorary member by a group of seven gay bikers each named after a well-known chocolate bar...
I woke up around three in the morning and surfed the channels aimlessly, until a remarkable bit of synchronicity occurred. The man on the screen was droning on about the making of Disney's Snow White. Not only had I heard it all before, I had actually just read it in a strangely mutated form.
It was not until later that I understood Webster's penchant for sleazy bars. At the time, it seemed perfectly natural to be having script meetings in a series of bars so disgusting that the flies escaped in a grateful swarm when you opened the door. Rumblefish on Abbott Kinney was the scene of our next meeting. A Tom Waits tribute band was competing with gay cowboys whose pool game constantly threatened to erupt into serious petulance. There was certainly plenty of atmosphere, underscored by the smell of urine, fear and the dank, foetid odour of American beer. You could scrape it off the wall.
I found Webster in a corner by the video trivia machine.
"Well?" he asked.
"Spiers' script? Yes, a fine piece of writing. I can see what you mean. It certainly drives forward relentlessly, doesn't it?"
"Get to the point, man."
"And it seems to be based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
For the first time Webster smiled. "You got it. So is your story"
This was a new concept to grapple with.
"You mean "Paris Days"?"
"Every story." He paused dramatically and a beatific smile lit up his face. "Since the dawn of time," he continued," since the first fuckers sat around the camp fire and listened to the hyenas howling in the jungle, there has only been one story."
"Snow White?"
"You got it. Snow White is the only story and every other story is Snow White."
"It's an interesting theory."
Our conversation was interrupted by an athletic person with a moustache who started kicking the trivia machine. "Fuck you, you bastard!" he wheedled.
"Hey, man. Hey!" Webster intervened. "The answer is number four. The state capital of California is Sacramento." Peace was restored.
"It is not a theory," Webster resumed." The world of movies knows only practicalities. Theories are for losers. This has been scientifically proved. You ask anyone in the business. They all have the knowledge, man, the secret knowledge of the ancients."
Virtually without punctuation, Webster expounded on the "eight step transformation" and went on to "critique" my screenplay in terms of what he called the classic three act construction- Act One - the set-up, the point of attack, Act Two - the initial struggle, complications, valiant attempts, Act Three - a major crisis and climax. "You have to get the mythic content correct. After that, it all falls into place. You may be closer than you think."
I was relieved to hear this. "So according to this way of constructing a story, who is Snow White?"
"The shrink - Regine. Tom is the prince and Konrad is the evil queen. That Marsupius guy, the one who's into tarot and magic, he's the seven dwarfs."
"But there's only one of him."
"He's a multiple personality, right?"
Suddenly, it was all clear.
Thank you Webster," I said, genuinely grateful." This is an invaluable insight."
"Tonight I want you to rewrite act one along the lines of the correct mythic content. I want to see that bastard Konrad one page two or three looking at his evil reflection in a mirror. I want language appropriate to a major motion picture and sex before page ten."
I could see that might pose a problem.
"Sex between whom?"
"Whatever. Doesn't matter. Just get it in there."
I was willing to be flexible. I was also relieved to be leaving Rumblefish just as the Patsy Cline karaoke was starting.
When I got back to The Hyatt, there was a message asking me to phone Webster at his office. It was reassuring to know that he actually had an office and I wondered why we had not met there so far. I tried the number, but there was no one there so I shrugged it off and decided to stick to our previous arrangements.
Before my final meeting with Webster McKay, I had some hours to kill and found myself investigating the ethnic groceries on Broadway.
Thinking of my wife and her current Mexican cooking fad, I decided to try a Hispanic deli called Hot Stuff. I explained to the assistant that I was looking for anything unusual or local by way of peppers or chillies.
"You want something really special?" asked the assistant, eyeing me thoughtfully.
"Something I couldn't get in England, perhaps."
"Are you a responsible adult?" he asked, narrowing his Mexican eyes. For a moment I thought I was being propositioned, offered drugs or pornography.
"I have something very special." He pulled down a bottle from a shelf behind the counter. People call it The White Devil. It is a pepper that only grows in two valleys near San Cristobel."
"Sounds interesting."
"More than interesting, my friend. After plutonium, this is one of the deadliest substances known to man."
I appreciated the dramatic sales pitch, but something in his tone was a little chilling.
"Hot stuff, eh? I'll take some."
"Not so fast, hombre. One, it's expensive. Two, it must only be handled with gloves. Three, we recommend goggles. And for Christssakes, don't take a pee after handling."
My appetite was whetted. I parted with thirty dollars for a small packet complete with instructions.
The Last Resort on Washington Boulevard was the venue for our final meeting. All the surrounding bars looked fairly salubrious, but true to form, Webster had picked the one that looked as though it had been constructed from mouldy driftwood. Webster seemed happier with my reworking of the script. As he flicked through the first few pages, he nodded and murmured his approval at the high school massacre on page one and Tom's gratuitous sexual encounter with a stewardess on Eurostar, which started just as the train entered the tunnel and climaxed just before it exited.
"I can see you've been making progress with the mythic content," he said. "I'll get back to you in a few days .So how's your day been, Andy?"
"Pretty good, actually. I'm looking forward to trying this when I get back to England. It's a present for my wife." I put the small packet on the bar and he examined it thoughtfully.
"Your wife?"
"Yes, Angela. She likes to experiment with new substances."
"Really?"
Something in his tone told me I had exceeded his expectations. Perhaps he was into cooking too.
He read the label.
"Never heard of this before," he said and started to untwist the packet.
"Be careful," I said. "It's very strong. They call it The white Devil. It should be treated with respect."
"How strong?"
"Blow your head off, it seems."
Webster was more intrigued. "How much?"
"Thirty dollars."
"That's cheap. Maybe because you are a first-time customer..."
Our dialogue was crisp and terse, almost worthy of the redoubtable Ludlow Spiers. What followed certainly was.
Before I could stop him, Webster had taken a pinch of White Devil and sniffed it. There was a still moment as he slowly swivelled his head sideways to regard me with wide ecstatic eyes, but ecstasy turned to horror as his body first became rigid and then began to arch slowly backwards. Falling to the floor, he began to carve a path across the bar in a caterpillar- like motion that seemed synchronised with the mambo Italiano playing on the juke box. Then the sneezing began. By the time the paramedics arrived, Webster McKay had effectively evacuated most of the soft tissues in his head through his nose, mouth and ears. As they carried him out he beckoned me over and the cortege halted. He could hardly speak and I bent close to his face.
"The mythic content," he rasped. "Remember the mythic content."
"Ok, let's go," said an impatient paramedic.
But there was more. The procession stopped again.
"Before you go..."
"Yes?"
"You must tell me...where...you got...that...stuff."
When I had gone through the formalities with the LAPD, I returned to the Hyatt to find someone waiting for me in reception. He was smartly dressed man in late middle age with the look of a lofty business executive or a government bureau chief. The most striking features of his face were two remarkably dense black eyebrows, which added a certain intensity to his otherwise mild expression.
"Andrew Morton?" he enquired. "Webster McKay. I've been trying to track you down for three days. What's the matter? You look as if you've just seen a ghost."
This time, I chose the bar.
"It's a common phenomenon here," explained the real McKay. "In a town based on fantasy, impersonation is rife. You've done me a favour. This guy has been busting my ass for years. He's a computer alpha geek who has gone to extraordinary lengths to hijack my business. He once did a complete lecture tour of Europe. "
When I came to think about it, the sordid world of sleaze the fake Webster had shown me had been pure theatre. The décor, the music, the clientele were all based on something else - a film set for The Mutiny on the Bounty, gay cowboys singing Patsy Cline, Webster himself assuming the role of a script guru. I could see why he was so obsessed with myth.
Webster encouraged me to talk a little about "Paris Days" and I began to open up a little.
"You know, he had me almost believing his theories--one in particular--"I started to giggle with relief"-- he had this theory that every story written since the beginning of time is a version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs! Ridiculous! I mean--King Lear--Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs--Oedipus..."
I was getting carried away. An element of hysteria was setting in but I soon recovered my breath when I noticed that the real McKay was not laughing.
"You may have forgotten The Seven Against Thebes," he coolly pointed out. "Antigone and her punishment at the hands of Creon closely resemble the Snow White immurement."
"I suppose you're right. Anyway, he showed me this script called "Die, You Bastard" written by some fellow called Spiers."
"Ludlow Spiers," nodded the real McKay. "It's a non-de-plume. Mine actually."
" Right!"
BEAT.
"Fine script!" I improvised and knocked back another drink.
I now began to feel the chill of an alien presence. Reflected back from the humourless grey eyes of the real McKay was the total madness of complete certainty. Despite his smart suit and diplomatic manner, was just as crazy as the fake McKay. In fact, it was worse, because he was the originator of the madness.
"I'm sure you'll understand," I said, "this has been quite a shock for me. I need time to regroup. I'll leave you with a revised script and we'll be in touch."
Webster entirely understood, but as we parted, I could see that he had written me off as a hopeless case.
Back at Throttle and Spinks, there was general hilarity. Jarvis called Cravatte in to listen to the story and she expressed dismay at the poor hygienic arrangements and outrageous clientele of the Rumblefish. "All sounds very queer to me!" she remarked with the rider "--if you'll forgive the expression."
"Don't mind me, Dolly," said Jarvis. "But Andrew, my dear, you must write all this down while it's still fresh in your mind." Which, of course, I have done. "Paris Days " is now going through its seventh draft and is provisionally titled "The Seven Faces of Dr Marsupius " but I'm beginning to doubt whether it will ever get made.
EDITOR'S NOTE: If you enjoyed this story, do NOT miss the accompanying essay in this issue. Guaranteed to continue your smiles! The Disturbing Case of Ludlow Spiers - Literary Ectoplasm .
Born in Nottingham, England, 1950, Andrew studied at Birmingham University under such figures as David Lodge, Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart, Park Honan and Stanley Wells, graduating in English Literature and Language in 1972. He has taught English in Birmingham for twenty-six years, where he currently lives with his wife and three children.
He also has a serious sideline in music, credits including original music for several TV documentaries, as well as the scores for the groundbreaking musicals Love and Spare Parts and Utopia and Beyond.
He has also written one stage play, How Low Can You Go? and dabbles in fiction on the Zoetrope Virtual Studio website, an activity which has led to publication in several Internet magazines.
He is a founder member of the seventies jazz/rock outfit Slender Loris, and has spent the last few months making their music available through mp3.comand constructing a Slender Loris website.