“No, Martin, I’m not. It sucks and I’m not going to do it.”
“But you were in a video with singing frogs,” Martin protests. “You were in a video where you turned into a bewildered tree, a plate full of water and a large, talkative banana, respectively.”
One of the band members says, “He’s got a point.”
“So what?” Leon shrugs. “You’ve got viral herpes, Rocko.”
“Has anybody forgotten that I’m directing this?” Martin asks air.
“Hey, I wrote the f**king song, stooge.” Leon looks over at the girl who kind of knows him, sitting on the pile of pillows. The girl smiles at Leon. Leon looks at her, confused, then away, then back again at the girl and then away again, then back again, then away.
“Leon,” Martin’s saying. “Listen, the video doesn’t make sense without this shot.”
“But you’re missing the point, which is I don’t want it to make sense. It doesn’t need to make sense,” Leon’s saying. “What are you talking about? Sense? Jesus.” Leon looks at me. “Do you know what sense is?”
“No,” I say.
“See?” Leon says accusingly to Martin.
“You want all those retards in whatchamacallit, Nebraska, staring at your video on MTV openmouthed, not realizing that it’s all a joke, thinking that after you shot your girlfriend in the head and the guy she was partying with that you meant it? Hub? You didn’t mean it, Leon. You liked the girl you shot in the head. The girl you shot in the head was a flower to you, Leon. Your image, Leon. I’m just helping you shape your image, okay? Which is of a nice friendly guy from Anaheim who is so f**king lost the mind reels, okay? Let’s just do it that way. It took someone four months to write this script—that works out to a month a minute, which is pretty impressive if you think about it—and it’s your image,” Martin persists. “Image, image, image, image.”
I put my hands to my head and look at Leon, who doesn’t seem that different than when I saw him with Tim at Madame Wong’s last Tuesday but maybe a little different, in a way I’m not sure about.
Leon is looking at the floor and sighing and then at the girl and then at me and then back at Martin and I have the feeling I’m not going to be able to have lunch with Martin, which is a loss of some kind.
“Leon,” Martin says, “this is Graham, Graham this is Leon.”
“Hi,” I say softly.
“Yeah?” Leon mutters.
There’s a longer pause, this one more distinct. The cameraman stands up, then sits back down on the floor and lights a cigarette. The band just stand there, no evidence of motion, staring at Leon. The cameraman says “Smoke machine busted” again and one of the girls from outside walks in and asks if anyone has seen her KAJAGOOGOO T-shirt lying around anywhere and then if Martin needs to use her anymore.
“No, baby, I’ve used you all up,” Martin says. “That’s not to say you weren’t great but someday I’ll give you a buzz.”
She nods, smiles, leaves.
“She’s pretty hot,” Leon says, watching her walk away. “Did you do her, Rocko?”
“Don’t know” is Rocko’s answer.
“Yeah, she’s pretty hot, she stays in shape, she’s f**ked everyone I know, she’s an angel, she has a hard time remembering her phone number, her mother’s name, to breathe,” Martin sighs.
“But the point is I could f**k her quite easily,” Leon says.
The girl sitting on the pillows who kind of knows Leon looks down.
“You would be f**king an abyss,” Martin says, yawning, stretching. “A clean, vaguely talented abyss. But an abyss nonetheless.”
I put my hands to my head again, then in my jeans.
“Well,” Martin starts. “This was all refreshing. What are we doing here, Leon? Hub? What are we doing here?”
“I don’t know.” Leon shrugs. “What are we doing here?”
“I’m asking you—what are we doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Leon says, still shrugging. “I don’t know. Ask him.”
Martin looks at me.
“I don’t know what we’re doing here either,” I say, startled.
“You don’t know what we’re doing here?” Martin looks back at Leon.
“Shit,” Leon says. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s take a break. I’m vaguely hungry. Does anyone know anyone who has beer? Hal, do you have any beer?” he asks the cameraman.