A Graveyard for Lunatics (Crumley Mysteries 2)

The two women stared at me in mild shock.

“It’s me,” I said. “Remember? Twenty years back. I was here. Space. Rockets. Time—?”

Charlotte gasped and flung her hand to her overbite. She leaned forward as if she might fall off the curb.

“Ma,” she cried, “why—it’s—the Crazy!”

“The Crazy.” I laughed, quietly.

A light burned in Mom’s eyes. “Why land’s sake.” She touched my elbow. “You poor thing. What’re you doing here? Still collecting—?”

“No,” I said, reluctantly. “I work there.”

“Where?”

I nodded over my shoulder.

“There?” cried Charlotte in disbelief.

“In the mailroom?” asked Ma.

“No.” My cheeks burned. “You might say … in the script department.”

“You mimeograph scripts?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ma.” Charlotte’s face burst with light. “He means writing, yes? Screenplays?!”

This last was a true revelation. All the faces around Charlotte and Ma took fire.

“Ohmigod,” cried Charlotte’s ma. “Can’t be!”

“Is,” I almost whispered. “I’m doing a film with Fritz Wong. Caesar and Christ.”

There was a long, stunned silence. Feet shifted. Mouths worked.

“Can—” said someone, “we have …”

But it was Charlotte who finished it. “Your autograph. Please? ”

“I—”

But all the hands thrust out now, with pens and white cards.

Shamefacedly, I took Charlotte’s and wrote my name. Ma squinted at it, upside down.

“Put the name of the picture you’re working on,” said Ma. “Christ and Caesar.”

“Put ‘The Crazy’ after your name,” Charlotte suggested.

I wrote “The Crazy.”

Feeling the perfect damn fool, I stood in the gutter as all the heads bent, and all the sad lost strange ones squinted to guess my identity.

To cover my embarrassment, I said: “Where’s Clarence?”

Charlotte and Ma gaped. “You remember him?”

“Who could forget Clarence, and his portfolios, and his coat,” I said, scribbling.