Chapter Two
Anomalous Disturbances
The next day, I left home in an unusually unpleasant mood.
My alarm clock went off an hour early, and then again an hour late, even after I'd sleepily reset it. As if that wasn't enough, it soon became apparent to me, shortly after rolling restlessly out of bed and dragging myself wearily to the bathroom, that overnight the water heater had unexpectedly short-circuited, thus assuring that my morning shower be every bit as crisp and chilly as an emperor penguin's toenails. Just another call to make, I supposed. But even that wasn't good enough.
One-handedly sliding back the dresser drawer, I quickly realized that in the past week or so I'd completely forgotten to do laundry. Not a T-shirt, not a single pair of jeans was clean. My mind made haste and I hurriedly ironed up the front side of a wrinkled Los Angeles Lakers jersey from the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper and threw on some equally-wrinkled jeans and a slightly oversized undershirt to compliment it.
Bad luck, like an abandoned puppy, seemed to follow curiously in my wake—this I had always acknowledged. Ever since my less-than-adequate birth—which, appropriately enough, had occured a full seven days ahead of schedule—my life had yielded little more than a continuous string of monotonous misfortunes. Heavy things fell on my head; clothes shrunk or bled colors when I washed them; people scuffed my shoes, as though intentionally, the first time I wore them; fragile objects turned to butter in my fingertips and shattered like chicken eggs when they hit the ground. I was a klutz, a doofus, a clumsy, unreliable, flat-footed, no-good waterfowl with an irritating lisp—and there was nothing I could do about it.
In fact, for the most part, I'd managed to grow fairly accustomed to it. After all, it wasn't always a complete washout, as some with similar symptoms would've surely testified. There were indeed positives, no matter how unfairly outweighed they may have been. For instance, no one ever asked me to help them move, or to carry anything special for them, or to arrive on time for any critical event. For most people, my success rate was far too iffy to chance risking everything all for the sake of little old me and my little old feelings. But I didn't mind. Really—I didn't.
Gently nursing a burnt index finger and mentally berating myself, I silently set aside the ironing board a few minutes later and sidled my way reluctantly towards the kitchen. My stomach was growling. Unfortunately, a small family of moths seemed to have laid eggs lovingly inside my last box of Corn Flakes. Why not the crackers or the mixed nuts? I asked myself with a frown. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered so much either way; the last gallon-jug of milk in the refrigerator had also gone sour.
I spilled coffee all over the morning paper and just barely escaped being doused myself as a whole cupful of thick French roast rolled in dense, brown beads down the side of the breakfast table. Worse yet, as an enormous groan would soon entail, I was fresh out of hand soap and paper towel. Thus, momentarily stepping aside to conjure up a much-needed grocery list, I hastily sopped up most of the mess with an unreasonably tiny dish sponge, my blood pressure rising steadily all the while.
Once I'd successfully scrubbed the table clean, I gazed down for a moment at my cheap, silver-plated wristwatch, biting my tongue like a horse in pain.
"5:01," it read incorrectly, neither hand so much as twitching. Dead batteries, I thought. Lucky, lucky me. Sighing intensely, I rubbed my eyes in disgust, knocking contact lenses way out of position in the process.
Melissa, at least, wasn't having a bad day—yet. Every waking moment, I knew, was torture for her. She'd described it to me a number of times, every facet of it, in elaborate detail. The tightness in her chest, the burning, the inability to breathe, all of it made me squirm. It made me sick to the stomach to think that I should complain about a cold shower and spilled coffee when she was still too weak even to stand. All the chemicals they'd fed her over the years had taken such a crippling toll on her body to the point, now, where she could do little but lay in bed all day, suffering constantly from the pain of seclusion.
It hurt me just to look at her these days; that's why I slept in the guest bedroom upstairs and left her to the master, to the bed we used to share.
She was still quite asleep when I crept in soundlessly to administer her first shot of the day. She didn't even budge as the needle went in, all the painkillers numbing her nerve endings like a groping fistful of novacaine. I avoided looking directly into her face, no matter how dormant it may have appeared, and when at last I'd finished, filed out of the room as noiselessly as possible. I didn't want her to see me, didn't want her to hear me. I couldn't stand it. The cold, empty look in her eyes, the wobbling, undertone whisper of her voice, the eerie frailty which turned her bones to jelly, just a glimpse of it, I knew, would surely haunt me for hours to come.
Suffice it to say I felt more comfortable leaving her to herself than sitting supportively at her bedside, but that's not to say I didn't care. I did. I just didn't have it in me to make her feel better, or, worse yet, to stomach the very image of her stifling illness. I simply couldn't bring myself bear it.
So I didn't.
I took to the road sometime around ten in a flashy '06 Zephyr and slowly laid into my daily dose of morning news.
Some Congressman was getting booted out of the House for sleeping with another Congressman's wife—lovely. A little white girl went missing somewhere in south-central Manhattan, but was recovered shortly thereafter thanks to an anonymous tip—touching. Two convicted serial killers escaped from a maximum security prison in Cleveland and actually managed to avoid detection—despicable.
AM radio was still my pre-breakfast darling, no matter how fragile and uncouth it may have seemed to some. After all, who else could I trust? The news, like everything else on radio and television these days, was merely a subtler form of entertainment—all about the many pleasantries and lustrous timing, the headlines, no matter how grave, nearly always riding shotgun. Still, it often helped start my day off on the right note to listen to some nameless jabberwocky carry on about other peoples' strife and misfortunes for fifteen seconds at a time.
Besides, it wasn't as if I needed to pay any great deal of attention to the road at the moment. I'd driven this route hundreds of times—snaking down the hills, into the valley, wading patiently through light after light. Navigating these old streets, I thought, was as simple as clockwork. Today, however, I was on a mission.
A few weeks back, I'd submitted my greatest brainchild—a lengthy, one hundred-eighty page screenplay—to the only major film studio I still felt, at this point, I could trust. A small offshoot of Warner Bros.—even smaller than Warner Independent—this little masquerade, which liked to call itself "Warner Classic," was founded by Wile E Coyote in 1999, a milestone in the making. Since then, his independent approach towards major motion pictures had garnered him a staggering total of ten Academy Awards, including one "Best Picture." Therefore, keeping our shared history as public buffoons in mind, it made sense that I should take my latest masterpiece, first and foremost, to his doorstep.
No more slip-ups, I assured myself. This time, I'd cater to the sophisticated crowd. More recent attempts to recapture my World War limelight had, as expected, gone unfulfilled. The same-old, same-old just didn't cut it anymore—not in this day and age—and one could only hope that all those painfully boring, unreleased cartoons from the mid-nineties never fell into the wrong hands. I grimaced at the very thought of it. A few of them never even made it past the cutting room floor. Apparently, taking slug after slug to the face just wasn't funny anymore, not to mention all the "political incorrectness." Not that I enjoyed it. It wasn't the laughs or the surreality of constant hype that I lived for; it was the fame, the fame and the money. Nothing more.
As an added incentive, I'd even declined to star in my latest film. This sudden return to the movie scene, I'd attempted to make abundantly clear, was less about appearing successful to the masses and more about getting my name out where it belonged again, back in the business, one last shot at sticking my foot in the door.
The lot outside of Wile E's office was, for the most part, small and depressing, like a rude reminder of every slow fuse Hollywood beginning ever devised. Only a cheap plastic sign smashed into the grass out front was there to identify it: "Warner Classic; private office of Wile E Coyote; actor, director, writer, producer."
I pulled in through the front gate and parked unknowingly in one of the two handicap spots, also slamming the baggy folds of my oversized golden jersey in the car door as I attempted to step out in haste. I was late—only by a few minutes, but with my luck, I might as well have shown up a full hour behind schedule. It wouldn't have made a difference. Late was late in my world; there were no give-or-takes.
Nevertheless, mindful of my current situation and all that it meant to me, I decided to turn a blind eye to my past misfortunes and head on in, in spite of the odds.
The lobby was small and rectangular, furnished like a doctor's office with lots of rubber plants and worn out couches. Off-white wallpaper made the whole place appear sterile—and the magazines twice as bland. A lone window in the corner sent long yellow blades of crisp morning light forking sporadically throughout the room, forcing me to squint uncomfortably as I entered. A trapped fly buzzed irritably somewhere close by.
The secretary, a tall, lanky, cream-colored rabbit of about Bugs's age, instantly recognized me as she looked up, waving me over from her self-important booth inside the wall, flipping through a tall stack of disorganized papers like an overworked stockbroker. I crossed the room and leaned impatiently against the counter, drumming my fingertips rhythmically behind her pen case and coffee mug, waiting for her to break the silence.
"Here to see Wile E?" she said at last, holding her head in her hands.
I nodded. "Didn't miss him, did I?"
"Well, that all depends," she replied with a sly look in her eyes. "He should be leaving for lunch any minute now—"
"Lunch?" I interjected. "But we had an appointment…"
"Well, when you didn't show up—" the door to her right cleaved her explanation in two.
"Daffy!" said Wile E with a jovial smile, suddenly entering the room. "Just the duck I've been looking for!"
"Yeah, sorry I'm late."
"No, don't worry about it!" He gave me a fierce pat on the back. "Say, I just got a call from an old friend of ours; Sylvester. Not sure if the two of you've been keeping up over the years, but he and I go way back. Anyway, he offered to buy me brunch at the mall this morning so we could talk and, well, I just couldn't refuse! You're welcome to come if you like. We can talk about your script!"
"Yeah. Right. The script," I droned, unenthused.
Wile E didn't notice. "Great!" he exclaimed with another pat—this time to the shoulder. "You won't regret it." He turned to his secretary, then. "Keep an eye on the place for me, would you, Lola? I should be back in a couple of hours, but don't cancel anything. Just put it all on hold for the time being, alright?"
She acknowledged him with her eyes only and made a few quick scribbles on her clipboard, never opening her mouth. She knew him all too well, I thought, grimacing inwardly as he guided me out the door.
Wile E's car, as expected, was a blue two-door Prius with "Impeach Bush!" and "Low Emissions" stamped, like party flyers, all over its ass. Together, the two of us barely fit in the front without folding our arms and bending our knees accordingly. Funny how someone like him could ever manage to be comfortable in such a shortchanging vehicle, I mused. After all, he was the tall one. Standing six-foot-nine, just barely over two hundred pounds, he looked more like a stick than a coyote. Factor in his repugnant dress code—bright, messy Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses, zip-off shorts, and flip-flops—and suddenly I was spending my morning with a walking attention-getter. Not that I minded, of course, but attention for all the wrong reasons was something completely different, something, quite frankly, I could do without.
"Hope you don't mind Bob Marley," he said rhetorically, adjusting the red and green Mardi Gras beads that hung lifelessly from his rearview mirror.
"Whatever you've got," I muttered back, folding my arms complacently across my chest. "Whatever you've got."
By the time we arrived in the food court, Sylvester had already been waiting by himself for several minutes. All alone at a table for four right next to the penny fountain, he seemed to resonate with an eerie, unpredictable sort of presence, like a pedophile on a playground bench. It wasn't until I'd sat down myself, however, that I realized brunch wasn't completely on him. He'd only bought two containers of Kung Pao chicken, not three.
"Wish I'd known you were coming, Daffy," he remarked unsubtly, lisping spit all over the table. "I would've got you something."
"Sure," I didn't mumble sarcastically.
"The duck's great here."
Wile E glared at him, but he never noticed his own faux pas.
"I bet it is, Sly," I frowned incredulously. "I bet it is."
Something about Sylvester had always rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed pompous beyond his years—or at least socially inept. Whatever it was, I could never quite put my finger on it. Perhaps I was simply destined to dislike him. Made about as much sense as my milk spoiling or my watch batteries going dead, I supposed. Not a bad theory.
The conversation lingered for a while on sports and current events—all the usual stuff—nobody really digging any deeper than they had to. Lakers or Clippers—which team's better? Of course the Lakers—but then again, what about Elton Brand? What about Kobe? Back and forth, like a metronome. Eventually, I got up and grabbed a slice of pizza from one of the nearby restaurants to quell the pounding hunger-headache rattling around the back of my skull and returned to find them dwelling on an entirely different subject altogether.
"You do realize," said Sylvester slowly, "that we, as a people, as a race, are completely uncultured, completely uselessto the rest of the world, right?"
I sat down cautiously, uncertain if either of them had even noticed me return. How did we get from basketball to this? I wondered silently to myself. Suddenly the enormous, Chicago-style slice of pizza in my hand seemed somewhat primitive in comparison to their urbane conversation—useless, perhaps, to paraphrase some of Sylvester's emboldened lingo.
Wile E turned his nose up disparagingly and let out an exhausted sigh.
"Really?" he said flatly. "And why is that again?"
"C'mon, I don't have to explain it to you. You've been around the world; you've seen what other cultures have to offer. Just think about it. Just think about what they have and what we've been missing."
"What, Sly? What have we been missing?"
"What have we been missing?" He made a face as though the very question itself were enough to nauseate him. "Wile E, we've been missing everything! We've already missed the whole fucking point! Just think about it!" He lowered his voice after a low rumble of uneasy whispers emerged from a table close by.
"Look, if we had to depend upon our people to eat, we would starve to death," he went on. "No question about it. Look around you." His hand directed our eyes slowly from storefront to storefront. "Look at all these restaurants," he demanded. "Name one—just one—that you would consider a product of our culture, a product of our people even being here…"
Wile E seemed to be drawing a blank at the moment. His eyes dodged anxiously back and forth, never quite coming to settle on any one subject in particular.
"Well," he stammered, "you—you can't go by this place. I mean, this—this is a mall. I'm sure that somewhere in some city there's a little café or something that—"
"Wile E, have you ever heard of a place serving 'authentic cartoon food?' Have you?"
Rather jerkily, then, as though he were extremely reluctant to abandon the idea, Wile E shook his head.
"Right," Sylvester smirked. "That's because it doesn't exist." He scooped a small spoonful of rice and chicken into his mouth and savored it for a moment. "See, our people have no food. We have no language. We have no music. Every other race the world over has some sort of obvious defining trait, some sort of specific historical baggage which nudges the collective culture in a certain direction—everyone… except for us. We don't have that. We don't have anything to call our own, and we never will, not as long as ninety percent of us are in the entertainment industry, and the other ten percent are unemployed."
Wile E cracked his knuckles. "Trust me, Sly, it isn't that bad. Everyone has their niche. Everyone has their specialty. Ours just so happens to be in entertainment. It's what we're built for. It's what we do best. What's wrong with that?"
Sylvester frowned. "You don't understand," he said. "See, I do volunteer work with L.A. Public Schools. I've seen the next generation of 'toons. I've seen our successors, and believe me, they've got a rough road ahead of them. Not because they're untalented, not because they're stupid or underprivileged or anything like that, but because they're so unmotivated that they can barely even look you in the eyes when they're talking to you. You should hear what some of these kids have to say. Really, it's depressing. No role models, no goals, no ideas, no creativity. I just want to help them realize that they can change the world without dropping an anvil on their heads."
I choked on a mouthful of Coke. They didn't notice.
"Well, bravo, Mr. Charity," Wile E sneered sarcastically. "Discouraging the one thing we know for sure we're good at—sounds like a brilliant fucking plan to me."
"I'm not discouraging them from anything, Wile E," Sylvester retorted sharply, leaning precariously over his food. "I'm presenting them with new opportunities, new ideas, so that maybe in the future, our chunk of the population will actually be able to look back and say that we've contributed something to society. If they wanna act, let 'em act, but that shouldn't be their only option."
"So basically you're saying… all the work we've done, all the cartoons we've filmed over the past sixty years… were just pointless rolls of celluloid that meant absolutely nothing?"
Sylvester hesitated. "In a manner of speaking."
"And why is that? Why can't they be a part of our culture? Why can't acting and screenwriting and stand-up comedy be a part of our culture?"
"Because we didn't invent any of those things," the cat explained. "Commercialized entertainment was already a big hit in America by the time we got here. Trust me, pal, there's not one thing the 'toon race has pioneered in all the years we've been around—not one thing."
"Yeah? Well, who cares?" Wile E snorted unrelentingly. "Who's grading us on our performance?"
"Nobody," Sylvester admitted. "But that's not the point. Y'see—"
Luckily, before he could delve into another long, philosophical rant, the golden faceplate on his wristwatch lit up and chirped noisily for all to hear.
"Shit, is it that time already?" He glanced peculiarly around the table, then, his cheeks flushing momentarily upon realizing he'd completely forgotten about me. Thoroughly embarrassed, he apologized unthinkingly through a brief, resoundingly weak half-smile, and stood suddenly with his keys and cell-phone in hand.
"Good discussion, boys," he said wearily, careful to pluralize. "Another hour or so and we'd have gotten to the bottom of it, don't you think?"
"I think we've been at the bottom for a while now, Sly," Wile E replied despondently.
"Whatever," Sylvester chortled anxiously, careful to choose his words at this stage in the game. "No hard feelings, right?"
The coyote nodded slowly, sucking Sierra Mist ravenously through a straw.
Turning hesitantly towards me, then, Sylvester shrugged his shoulders. "Nice seeing you again, Daffy." He dropped one of his business cards plaintively on the table. "We haven't had a good chance to catch up lately. Give me a call sometime, alright?"
Without even looking at it—or him for that matter—I gently tucked away the tiny, square scrap of cardboard, closed my wallet, and silently folded my arms across my chest.
I didn't even look at it.
Once again adopting an incoherent look of utter displacement, Sylvester laid his hands fervently on his hips and stood there momentarily like a stone, as though waiting for a long, formal goodbye. He never received one.
"Well," he observed rhetorically, patiently dragging out each syllable, "I've got a Little League game to coach." Still not a word—not even a glance.
He scratched his head disappointedly. "So… see ya' later, I guess…"
"Yeah, see ya'," Wile E returned morosely, eyeing the unusual feline through his eyebrows as he scuttled off into the distance, slowly fading into the crowd until, at last, he'd completely disappeared from sight.
A vengeful look in my eyes, I turned to Wile E with acid on my tongue. "Alright, Hardheadipus Oedipus," I spat irritably, recalling one of his many long-dead monikers, "your buddy's had his turn; now it's mine. What about my script?"
"What about it?" he repeated annoyingly.
"Well, how much are you willing to give me for it?"
At first, he didn't answer. Staring blankly down at the synthetic tabletop in front of him, he carefully tore the plastic cap off his Styrofoam cup and reached mechanically inside with his bare hands, emerging a few seconds later with a small chunk of ice wedged delicately between his fingertips. He shoveled it swiftly into his mouth and crushed it between his teeth, gazing up at the ceiling for a moment, as though lost in thought.
"Good question," he said finally. "Very good question."
Unsure of what he meant exactly, I froze and waited for him to clarify.
"How do you feel… about your name?" he inquired flatly.
"My name? What do you mean?"
"I mean, does it bother you? Does it… matter to you?"
"Well, it's certainly not the best name I've ever heard of," I replied with a frown. "Daffy; adjective; silly, weak-minded, crazy. Makes it sound like you're trying to insult me every time you want my attention. Still, I don't mind it. I like the way it looks on paper, the way it sounds, the way it's spelled. Maybe if it meant something else, like—like 'incredibly brilliant one' or 'perfect in every way' or something like that, it wouldn't be so bad, y'know?"
"Yeah, but—but aside from that," he murmured, "is it, like, real important to you, or—or could you go without it?"
"What're you talking about?" I demanded fervently. "What's wrong with my name?"
"Look, don't—don't make this any tougher than it already is, okay?" he said hurriedly. "It's got nothing to do with the quality of your writing, it's just… in this case, we had to try something to save face."
Save face? I didn't like the sound of that, and what did my name, of all things, have to do with it?
"Here's the deal," he explained softly. "I finished reading your script about… two weeks ago—way ahead of schedule. I just couldn't put it down, y'know? It was perfect—absolutely perfect."
My chest swelled with pride.Of course it was perfect, I grinned inwardly. I wrote it, remember?
"As soon as I was finished," he went on, "I started talking to my advisors about it. I was excited. I wanted to make you an offer right away, but first," he paused slowly, licking his lips, "they wanted to read it."
My heart winced anxiously.
I shrugged my shoulders. "And what? They didn't like it?"
"No, no, no," he said quickly. "They liked it. They loved it, in fact. They thought it was great, just like I did, only… they wanted to change something."
"Change something?" I repeated. "What? The main character? The ending? The climax? More sex?"
He didn't laugh, and he wasn't supposed to. "No, none of that," he assured me. "Let's put it this way: the only words they wanted to change were… on the cover."
"On the cover? You mean… the title?"
Somberly, he shook his head. "Below that."
But, the only thing below the title was… my name…
… my… name…
The blood froze in my veins.
"By Daffy Duck," it said. "By Daffy Duck."
Those words alone, I knew, meant just as much to me as anything else in that script, and now they, too, were at risk of being tampered with? I didn't want to believe it. I didn't feel as though I could handle it. All my life I'd been stripped of everything but my name and my dignity, and now, for the first time ever, my name, too, was slowly beginning to slip away from me.
"What're you saying?" I demanded, almost rhetorically, hoping against hope he wouldn't provide the answer I dreadfully suspected.
"They," he paused, "think it would be best if… your name was removed from the writing credits."
My chest deflated like a balloon on a carpet tack. Remove my name? I thought. Remove my fucking name? No. No, that wasn't possible. That wouldn't happen. That would never happen. They'd have to kill me first. They'd have to kill me and bury me in the desert where no one would ever find me. They'd have to chop me up and sell my parts to the Mongolian Barbeque in Crenshaw to get away with it. After all, they must've known that as long as I still had a breath left in my body I'd never ink a deal under those terms. Never—not in a million years, not if my life depended on it.
"Are you… okay with that?" Wile E mumbled hopefully, his voice taking on a low, vulnerable pitch.
My eyes narrowed dangerously, like a hawk swooping down over its prey. "Who the fuck do you think you're talkin' to?" I snarled ferociously.
"Look, Daffy, we can work this out—"
"No, we can't," I interjected dismissively. "You don't have a choice here, pal. If you want the script, make me an offer, but don't waste your time tryin' to carve out some ridiculous deal that we both know you're never gonna get."
"I wasn't finished," he snarled back, bearing his teeth. "Your name would only be missing from the theatrical release. By the time we made it past syndication, we could easily just put it back. Really, it's no big deal."
"Then why even bother to take it off in the first place?"
"Well, because, quite frankly, Daffy," he declined to look me in the eye as he spoke, "your name tends to be rather synonymous with… failure."
My heart was pounding now, the adrenaline scraping violently against the walls of my veins. "Failure? You think I'm a failure?"
"No, no, I didn't say that—"
"You might as well have," I grumbled impatiently.
"I didn't!" Several people sitting around us suddenly glanced in our direction. Wile E bit his upper lip, slightly embarrassed.
"I didn't," he said again, lowering his voice. "Listen, I know this isn't the most ideal situation in the world, but let's face it… facts are facts. Why would anybody take this movie seriously knowing that you—you, of all people—wrote it?"
"Why wouldn't they?" I responded shortly, unconvinced.
"C'mon, Daffy, you're a physical comedian. You're the fall-guy, the paranoid egotist who can barely keep his beak on straight. This movie you wrote, it's a… it's a political thriller, it's a creepy, suspenseful drama. It's over three hours long, for Christ's sake! Who else besides the people that actually know you would even consider buying a ticket?"
"Y'know, Wile E," I muttered spitefully, "an hour ago, I never would've believed you were this full of shit…"
He folded his arms, slightly surprised, perhaps, at the sudden upstanding tone and clarity of my voice. I was even making it through my 'S's fairly well, only the occasional mispronounced drop of saliva spattering weakly on the table in front of me.
"You can't get away with this," I reasoned stoically. "Logically, it isn't possible. How're you gonna answer all those questions? What're you gonna say when people start asking you who wrote it?"
"Don't worry about it. We'll have an answer."
"Oh, really?" I snorted. "And what might that be? You gonna tell 'em Bugs wrote it?" I couldn't help but laugh at that, even if it was in poor taste. Outside of checks and contracts, Bugs had barely written a self-initiated word in his life. What a Hollywood handyman, I snickered.
And yet, in the midst of everything, something seemed to be terribly wrong.
All of a sudden, there was a very different look on Wile E's face, one of irony and quiet amusement, as though he knew something that I had yet to discover, something huge, something colossal and earth-shattering. Upon seeing it, I immediately stopped laughing and the twisted, boyish smirk fell from my beak like a crisp layer of cold autumn leaves.
It couldn't be…
"You… you can't be serious…" I pleaded, suddenly every bit as weak and exposed as an injured mouse, backed helplessly into a corner. "Bugs? You're gonna… you're gonna credit my work to Bugs?"
"We've already reached an agreement with him, Daffy. I'm sorry. It was the only thing we could do."
The only thing they could do? The only thing they could do? My head was swimming now, my eyes bulging, pounding relentlessly against the back of my skull. My forehead felt as though it could've caved in at any moment and my legs were shaky and numb. My mind raced, desperately searching for the right word—any word—to accurately describe my position.
None of this seemed the least bit real to me at the moment; like a dream, like a terrible, unforgiving nightmare, one that I would surely wake up from at any moment without a scar to show for it. And yet, there it was, like a reflection on the water, all so crisp and clear before me, a despicable, spineless coyote waiting for my response.
"No," I said flatly. "I won't let you. It's my script, I still have the rights to it, and I'll be damned if you're gonna give it away to—to someone like him."
Someone like him. I wondered what I meant by that.
"Give it away? Daffy, you're the one who wrote it! Besides, you haven't even heard what we're willing to offer you yet!"
"No, I don't wanna hear it!" This time, it was my turn to draw attention to our table. I leapt to my feet like a cat sprayed with a hose, nearly knocking over my chair in the process.
"This isn't about the money! This is about me!"
"Would you sit down?!" Wile E hissed through gritted teeth, his eyes shifting edgily back and forth. "You're not making a point, you're just embarrassing yourself!"
Slowly, I shook my head. "You can tell your advisors," I mimed quotation marks with my index and middle fingers, "that I've decided to take my work elsewhere."
Wile E didn't look convinced. He rubbed his forehead irritably, keeping his nose down as though to hide his face.
"Take it wherever you want, Daffy, they're all gonna tell you the same thing."
"Yeah, we'll see about that," I muttered spitefully, clenching my hands into fists, resisting the urge to let loose a long, careless string of obscenities. Wile E didn't know what he was talking about. What studio in their right mind would pass up an opportunity like this? Warner Bros.—or, more appropriately, Warner Classic—wasn't the only L.A. production outfit I could entertain at the moment. Columbia, Miramax, New Line, Paramount, and Universal were all still viable options. One way or another, I was going to sell this script—that alone I was certain of.
My eyes danced searchingly over my surroundings—dozens of people, all frozen in place as though a curious arctic breeze had just recently blown through. They were staring at me, their mouths slightly agape, variations on the same look of mystification. Wile E, too, seemed to be growing increasingly uncomfortable under the circumstances.
"Just go," he said softly, still averse to raising his chin. "You can leave a message with my secretary when you've decided to calm down."
I frowned at that. He still thought he had a chance, the simple bastard—but for all intents and purposes, his narrow window of opportunity had all but slammed shut.
I turned to leave, but the unpleasant incursion of a single dreadful thought forced me to stop dead in my tracks.
Slowly, I turned back around. "You're, uh, gonna have to give me a ride back to my car," I muttered coldly. "I didn't bring enough for a cab."
Disbelievingly, his head rose up from behind his hands like a fuzzy, chocolate-brown sunrise. At the same time, I wondered if my alarm clock had anything to do with all this.
Wile E and I rode all the way back to his office in relative silence, only the bluesy, melancholy rhythm of Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier there to quiet the animosity between us. Nevertheless, it didn't help that Wile E's environmentally pro-active liberal-mobile was barely large enough to seat the two of us, let alone keep our shoulders from touching. There wasn't any space to think. Even with the music, the discomfort hung so thickly in the damp, recycled air that both our brains, like a pair of rotten, week-old melons, turned to utter mush inside our heads. Awestruck and edgy, I stared intensely out the window next to me, careful not to make any sudden moves lest I incur an unwelcome glance from my estranged coyote companion. Similarly, Wile E seemed to be doing his part by driving as quickly and recklessly as possible. He didn't even flinch as he turned left on red and drew a flurry of angry horns from a long line of oncoming traffic.
Luckily, we somehow managed to make it back without incident. He parked his car up front and we immediately went our separate ways, grunting uncomfortable salutations to each other as we crossed paths—I to my own vehicle and he to his cushy desk. Whether or not we'd ever negotiate again was purely up to him, I figured, sighing airily to myself as I peeled the bright yellow parking ticket off the front of my windshield—damn handicap spot…
It was almost half-past twelve when I arrived back home, just in time to instill my wife with her second medicinal shot of the day. I wasn't looking forward to it. Normally, she slept close to twenty-two hours, sunrise to sunset, yet somehow, as though her life depended on it, she always seemed to wake as I administered the middle dose. Without a nurse to lend a helping hand, I was forced to feed her, clean her, and clothe her, yet, at the same time, for reasons unexplainable, I rarely ever spoke to her, and if my instincts proved the least bit receptive, she seemed to hate that more than anything else.
I washed my hands in the master-bathroom sink, staring myself down in the enormous mirror which spanned almost the entire length of the wall. Water splashed up on the glass. I didn't wipe it off, just watched it roll down in beads, long soapy streaks, staining the surface.
There was a case of syringes in the bathroom closet—syringes I carefully rinsed and sterilized before every use—and a thick, tamper-proof plastic box containing several month-long supplies of Melissa's medication. Her doctor had done his part in plugging it as "state of the art" and "highly advanced." Unfortunately, while it did seem to keep her heart pounding, it also left her overwhelmingly weak and debilitated, not to mention the simple fact that a single solitary dose would've cost most people an arm and a leg. Even for someone as affluent as myself, the monthly payments were beginning to become a hindrance.
Drawing up a needle-full, I returned to her bedside with my thumb on the plunger, praying to God she wouldn't open her eyes. The I.V. unit connected to her arm appeared to have gone dry some time ago and her breathing was short and labored. With one hand, I gently brushed a few molting feathers from her forehead and attempted to gauge her temperature in the process. She was cold—ice cold. Her eyes had rings around them and her bill was pale and discolored, dotted here and there with sallow splotches of beige and eggshell. She barely looked anything like the duck I used to know, like the duck whose hand I took in marriage. And to think, less than two years ago I might've spied her in the living room reading sappy murder-mystery novels or dancing lightheartedly around the kitchen, toasting a B.L.T. sandwich to Stevie Wonder's greatest hits. What I wouldn't give for a chance to turn back the clock… for a chance to make it all better… for the both of us…
I dropped to one knee like a monk paying his respects and cautiously took hold of her left arm. The soft spongy skin around the artery never put up much of a fight and, thus, the needle went in fairly easily. Depressing the plunger all in one fluid motion, I regretfully deposited yet another dry, intoxicating dose of thin, colorless liquid into her sinewy veins and pulled the syringe out as quickly as possible.
She reached for my hand. My body froze. Her fingers interlaced with mine. She pulled me closer, her pale gray eyes just barely open. She squeezed, and neither of us spoke for several minutes after that. We only stared at each other, eye-to-eye, beak-to-beak, in absolute silence.
Inside, my heart was doing backflips, wearing itself thin, pounding against the walls of my ribcage as though it desired nothing more than to escape. I swallowed hard, hoping against hope she'd let go of me, hoping against hope she'd fall back asleep. But she didn't. She couldn't, not when she had me here like this, not when she had me cornered.
"H—hey," I whimpered shakily, my features all falling simultaneously. "How do you feel this morning?"
At first, she didn't answer. Then she pursed her lips and took a deep breath.
"Alone," she managed, her eyes still attached to me, searching.
I held her hand in my own, gently caressing her palm. "I know. I'm sorry. I—I didn't want to wake you. You were sound asleep… when I left…"
"You… left?" she murmured, her cavernous stare growing steadily wider.
"Yeah," I nodded. "Yeah, just for a couple of hours. I had a meeting."
"A meeting?" she repeated wearily. "With who?"
I touched her shoulder, started to say "don't worry about it," then decided against it. I felt guilty trying to distance myself from her. She deserved to know what I'd been doing with my time, no matter how reluctant I was to tell her. After all, no matter how different, she was still my wife.
"Wile E," I said quickly, swallowing my pride. "You remember Wile E, right?" She blinked. "Well… well, he and I, we—"
My voice broke off without warning. My name, I thought. My fucking name!
"We… we… we might be working together," I stammered profusely, feigning a confident smile.
I was crumbling inside, the reality of it all just beginning to sink in, like sweat beneath my feathers. I was lying—lying to her—sugarcoating everything I'd sworn I wouldn't… just to make it easier on myself, just to avoid repeating all those tasteless, discouraging remarks lingering around the back of my skull. My throat tightened up like a frightened serpent as I coughed out more and more.
"He said he might be willing to—to buy my script," I lied. "Y'know, the script I've been working on since Speedy's wedding?" Part of me felt as though saying it aloud might've helped it come true. Part of me felt as though it already had.
"They're gonna turn it into a movie," I sputtered, failing to gulp down the knot in my throat. "Wile E's gonna direct it."
"That's wonderful, Daffy." She smiled loftily, her eyes fluttering. "That's wonderful."
"And when it's all said and done," I added, "I'm gonna take you to the premiere."
Her entire face went blank. Her upper lip quivered dissonantly. Slowly, she retracted her hand.
"No. You shouldn't say things like that. You shouldn't make promises… that can't be kept."
I almost reached for it—her hand—just to take it back, just to hold it in my own again, just to feel that eerie, receding warmth… just one more time. But I didn't.
"C'mon, don't—don't talk like that," I responded brightly. "By this time next year, you'll be all better, trust me. You'll be able to breathe again, to—to walk again..." I trailed off unconvincingly. "It could go back into remission at anytime, that's what the doctors said. It has to."
Suddenly, she seemed slightly perturbed.
"Why?" One word.
I cracked my knuckles and looked away from her—past her.
"Because I love you." Four words—short ones, meaningless.
You have no idea
what you're getting yourself into.