MIKE RESNICK

WORKING STIFF

I'm the best bus driver on the downtown line, and damned proud of it. I take the
wide turn around East Elm Street -- trickiest comer on my whole route -- feeling
the tires slide across a patch of early-morning slush, and then skid to a stop
right in front of the station. Twelve midnight. Right on schedule. I've always
been a good schedule driver. And no one's got quicker reflexes.

There's still one passenger aboard. I open the door and the bitter cold air
whisks down the aisle. Winter in upstate New York comes in hard and fast off
Lake Ontario. Sometimes it hits as early as September and sticks around till
May. Not exactly the kind of weather I grew up with back on the island, but I
always hated tropical heat.

I turn around and this guy is still sitting on his duff. "End of the line,
Mister," I announce.

The guy walks up slowly from the rear, then sits in that first seat opposite me.
He's a short, chunky guy. Glasses. Neatly trimmed beard. Shirt and tie under a
fancy overcoat. Nice boots. Not the kind of guy you'd normally see on my line,
so I've got a pretty good idea as to what's coming next. By now I can sense when
one of these jokers has come looking for a story.

"Mind if we have a chat?" he says, sweet as pie. "I'm from New York Silver
Screen Magazine."

I shrug. "Why not?"

I crawl out of the driver's seat, and the two of us walk through the gathering
snow into the bus terminal. "Wait here," I tell him. He sits on a bench in front
of the tall Plexiglas windows facing South Avenue, and I go to the supervisor's
station to clock off my shift, half-expecting him not to be there when I get
back. Some of them don't wait. Some of them, the brighter ones, can tell right
off they're not going to get the story they came hunting for.

Not this guy, though: he's still waiting. He gives me a fake smile and says,
"How's about I buy you some breakfast?"

"Thanks, but no thanks," I answer. "I got some errands to run. You're welcome to
tag along." I turn my back on him and head for the street. He follows.

"You know, you're not exactly what I expected," he says thoughtfully.

I sigh. "You mean I'm not as big as you expected."

He nods. "Right."

That's the first thing that strikes most of them. I'm pretty big, but they
always expect bigger. Much bigger.

We step outdoors into the cold black morning. I start walking. I walk
everywhere, or take the bus. I'm too large to fit comfortably in a car. I tried
a sleek little Mazda RX-7 once; three years old, 47,000 miles, drove like a
dream -- but it always felt like I was about to swallow my knees.

I figure the wind-chill has dropped the temperature to three or four degrees
below zero. Maybe I can shake this guy yet. After all, he doesn't have a fur
coat. Me, I live in mine.

"Why only one film?" he says. I grimace. These journalists are so predictable.
They'll ask one question, maybe two, about me, and then, inevitably, they'll ask
about her. "Don't you miss her? What did she mean to you? What do you remember
most about her? Do you still talk to her?"

So I state the obvious. "There's not a lot of opportunity for a guy like me in
Hollywood. I'm not exactly your typical leading man, you know?"

We walk into this tavern on Alexander Street, brush off the snow and sleet, and
take a couple of stools at the bar.

Vinnie the bartender comes right over. "What can I do for you boys?"

I pull a wad of bills out of my jacket pocket and start peeling off twenties.
"What's the line on the Bengals and the Jets?"

Vinnie looks at my friend.

"He's okay," I tell him.

"What's his name?"

"I don't know. What's your name?"

The guy looks ill at ease. I can't say as I blame him. "Parker Granwell," he
says, extending his hand to Vinnie. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir."

Vinnie snickers. He's got this kind of wheezing emphysema laugh. He was shot in
the ribs a few years back. The bullet left him with an air leak and a limp, as
if he's got a permanent stitch in his side. "Where'd you find this nerd?"

"He found me," I answer. "What's the line?"

"Minus two," says Vinnie.

"Under-over?" I ask.

"Thirty-eight."

"What about the Dolphins and the Bills?"

"Miami plus six-and-a-half. Forty-two."

"I'll take the Dolphs and over for a hundred, and the Bengals and under for
forty . . . no . . . make it sixty."

Vinnie takes my money. "What about the nerd? Care to place a wager?"

"I'll pass," says Parker, fidgeting on his bar stool.

Vinnie chuckles. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Parker Granwell, sir" -- he makes it
sound like a title -- and limps into the back room.

I nod toward the door. "Let's go." We enter the storm again. Granwell seems like
a decent enough guy, and I figure I might as well give him what he wants. So as
we walk, I talk about the good old days, the days of Mary Pickford and Doug
Fairbanks and Scott Fitzgerald, the days of Gable, Harlow, and Cagney, the glory
days of Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, MGM, and of course RKO, the days
before the Screen Actors Guild destroyed something so pure and simple as the
studio contract. I even throw in some trite quotable stuff about Willis
O'Brien's brilliant animation and Max Steiner's under-appreciated musical score
and Merian Cooper's genius. What the hell, it was all true; I just never cared.

Anyway, Granwell nods and takes some notes and throws in a "Yeah-uh-huh -- okay"
every now and again, and when it's all over he tucks his notebook in his coat
pocket and frowns, the snow gathering in his neat beard.

"I do believe that is the longest line of bullshit I have ever heard," he says.

"I've had a lot of practice," I reply without missing a beat.

"I want the truth."

He's right, of course, about the bullshit. But he's wrong about the truth. He
doesn't really want it. None of them ever do.

We stop at the Cork Screw, a liquor store about the size of a meat freezer over
on Chestnut Street. Max closes at midnight but he's always in the back room till
around two or three, counting receipts, punching figures into his adding
machine, and drinking away his profits. I like Max. We've spent many an evening
together talking football and getting drunk. He's one of the few people in the
world who has never seen the movie, and has no desire to.

I rap on the back door. Max opens up and asks me in.

"Sorry, Maxy," I greet him. "I can't stay tonight. I got company I can't get rid
of."

Max peeks out the door and shows the barrel-end of his Remington twelve-gauge.
"I'll bet I can get rid of your company for you."

I see Granwell go a little pale. This is more than he bargained for. He was
probably looking for an easy piece of back-page fluff, not a tour of the inner
city in sub-zero weather, complete with gangsters and sawed-off shotguns.
"That's all right, Maxy, he's okay. You got any overstock tonight?" I peel off
another twenty and, as usual, Max won't take it. He hands me a bottle of
Canadian Club--not my favorite, but well worth the price--and Granwell and I
make our way down Chestnut, through the windy spray of sleet and snow, to the
trucking warehouse where I rent my living space.

I push through the heavy doors, click on the overhead light bulb, and invite him
in. What the hell. I'm always hoping that one of these guys, one of these days,
will print the truth. The Truth. Your king lives in a warehouse surrounded by
banana crates, and sleeps on two king-size mattresses thrown on top of a
concrete floor. Your king is a bus-driver who gambles and drinks away his
paycheck. Your king never wanted his goddamned crown, and if he regrets one
thing in his life, it's that he took the role that made him king, that he died
on-screen for the love of a flat-chested wig-wearing blonde, and that the world
can't forget about it.

And neither can he.

Suddenly, the Canadian Club doesn't appeal to me. I need a beer. I open my
fridge, crack open a Bud, and offer one to Granwell. Much to my surprise, he
accepts.

"You know," he says, "minor has it that your movie saved RKO. They were ready to
file for bankruptcy when -- "

"Yeah, it's true. But let's get one thing straight. It's not my movie."

"Without you, there is no movie." He sits on a banana crate and sips his Bud.
"In 1975, the American Film Institute honored it as one of the favorite American
films of all time. There was even a reception at the White House."

"You got guts, Parker Granwell," I say, guzzling my beer and crushing the can.
"You want honesty? I like being a bus driver. I like to gamble and I like to
drink. I like my friends and my life. Why not let it go at that?"

"I don't get it. Why did you leave the island if you didn't want to be king?" I
can't help but laugh at that one. How could I have known back in 1933 what I was
getting myself into? I was just a big kid. So I tell him the truth, just like I
tell all the others: "I hated that damned island. The heat, the gigantic
insects, the carnivorous spiders, snakes a mile long, vultures the size of
airplanes, the tyrannosaurus always hunting me. I had to fight the pterodactyls
and pteranodons for every scrap of food. I was allergic to more plant-life on
that goddamned island than you can find on this whole fucking continent. And the
natives were the worst of the lot: they'd sacrifice virgins to me one minute and
chuck spears at me the next. How long do you think I could have survived in that
environment?"

I take a deep breath and continue. "I needed a change, and quick -- but the
problem was getting off the island. I couldn't swim. [Still can't.) Anyway, I
hear through the grapevine that this guy Merian Cooper is vacationing on the
island and he's putting together this film in the States and it just so happens
he needs an ape, so I go looking for him. Once he calms down he gives me this
mock screen test and he likes what he sees. The rest is history."

"How did you get so small? I mean, you were huge-- forty, fifty feet tall at
least."

I shrug, go to the fridge, crack open another Bud. "That one's a mystery to me,"
I admit. "But I have a theory. I think the universe has to be in a kind of
balance. Over the years, as the myth grew bigger, I got smaller. It's as if
there's not enough room for both of us in this world: it can accommodate either
me or the myth -- and the myth is a hell of a lot stronger than I am."

Granwell looks like he's mulling it over, then apparently decides to let it go.
"I'd like to read you something," he says. "It's an open letter from--"

"Let me guess," I interrupt, because while I have never read his writing, I can
read Granwell himself like a book. "It's from the one true love of my life."

"It's from the introduction to her autobiography," he answers, missing my finely
wrought sarcasm. "It reads something like this: 'I wonder whether you know how
strong a force you have been to me. For more than half a century, you have been
the most dominant figure in my public life. To speak of me is to think of you. .
. . You have accumulated so much affection over all the years that no one wants
to kill you. What the whole world wants is to save yOU.'"

I pick up the remote, click on the television set, and flip to ESPN. Speed Week.
Damn. I was hoping for a college football game.

"Don't her words mean anything to you?" asks Granwell. "Don't you ever think of
her? Don't you have anything you want to say to her?"

So at last Parker Granwell comes clean. I mute the TV and shoot him my most
fetal expression, curling my lips and showing my fangs, but to be perfectly
honest, there isn't much in me to be afraid of anymore.

I set down my beer. "Do you think you're the only bright-eyed reporter who has
ever bothered to track me down, Granwell?" I say. "Hell, it's been sixty years
since I made that flick. You all come looking for the same thing. You want to
find this gigantic, forlorn ape, pining after the woman of his dreams, the woman
whose heart he could never capture because he's nothing but a savage beast. And
none of you can bear the fact that it just isn't so." I pause long enough to
stifle a growl deep in my chest. "The truth is I'm not a savage beast and never
was. I never loved that screeching bitch. I never even liked her. In fact, I
could barely tolerate her. I was acting, plain and simple. She used to give me
migraine headaches on the set like you wouldn't believe. Cooper hired her for
her piercing scream, which as far as I can tell was her only talent. And she
made up for her inadequacies by burrowing into the Hollywood social scene like
some pathetic maggot. Who was Cary Grant dating and was Hepburn as good an
actress as everybody said and was Fitzgerald going to be at this party or at
that one? Christ, she made me want to puke!" Instead I belch, which suits me and
my mood just fine.

Granwell just sort of shakes his head. I can see it in his eyes: This won't do
at all, he's thinking. He's already put his notebook away. He says, "Paul
Johnson wrote an appreciation of you in the New Statesman back in the sixties.
It was brilliant. He called you a creature of intelligible rage, nobility,
pathos. He called you a prehistoric Lear. And he was right, you know. You're
America's only king."

They all come to this realization sooner or later. Elvis won't cut it because of
the drugs and some of the ugly things he did and stood for which just won't go
away, and they've learned too much about Kennedy, and the world is too hard and
cold and jaded now to come up with anything better. America may be a land of
riches and excess and (some say) even self-made royalty, but it is not a land of
monarchs. No, there's only one king. Me. The ape. "I'm sorry I don't live up to
your expectations."

Granwell sighs. "So if we just leave you alone, if we let you pass your time
quietly here on Earth, we can take comfort in knowing that your myth will
survive."

I nod. "Don't sweat it, Parker. Most people have already forgotten about me. I'm
out of the loop, man. All the golden anniversary celebrations for that stupid
movie -- I didn't get a single engraved invitation. Not one. De Laurentis never
called to consult with me about the remake. I didn't even get an invite to that
White House thing back in '75. But she was there, kissing up to Jimmy and
Rosalyn Carter." This time I can't hold back the growl. "She wouldn't have
missed it for the world."

"Don't you think you're being a little tough on her? She was one of the most
popular actresses of her day, worked with every major male lead in the business
-- and then, to be frank, you ruined her. After your film, the monster-movie
offers came pouring in, and nobody would give her the serious roles she
deserved."

Granwell's no different than the rest of them. By the time they finish talking
to me, they wish they never found me, and so do I. "Look, man, I'm just a
gorilla. I don't share your sense of tragedy."

Granwell sets his beer down, slides off the banana crate, and walks to the door.
"Thanks for the chat."

I call after him: "If you want to make an old ape happy before he dies, print
the truth."

"You will never die," he says, and walks out.

Touche.

Suddenly I could use some Canadian Club. I pour myself a tall one, drop down on
my mattresses, and start flipping through the channels. I pull the covers up to
my chin and listen to the fierce wind howling through the empty lot behind the
warehouse. I've got a chill I can't get rid of. Regardless of the temperature,
some nights are colder than others.

Fifty-seven channels and there's nothing on. Yet on any given night, if I can
keep my eyes propped open long enough to catch the late shows . . . if I don't
pass out from the booze or the beer or the boredom . . . chances are, sooner or
later, I'll come across my favorite film.