8763 Wonderland

Trace wanted to go to Rockville, Maryland, and get drunk at Fitzgerald’s grave but Marcel wouldn’t hear of it.

“The magazine doesn?t have that kind of money,” Marcel said.

“How much is it going to cost? Three hundred dollars? Four? I won?t even need a hotel. I’ll sleep on a park bench. Better yet, I’ll sleep in the cemetery.”

“Why do you want to do this?” Marcel asked. He was reading Trace’s sparse poem one last time before handing over a check.

“It would make a great story for Kidnap, Marcel.”

“No, there’s more to it than that.” Marcel laid the poem aside and slid his reading glasses off his face and clasped his hands on his desk like a benign psychiatrist confronting his patient head-on. “You’re in a melancholy mood today.”

“I’m in a morbid mood.”

Trace reached to the floor for his canvas bag and rummaged around between the books and notepads and pens until he found what he was looking for: the empty Altoids tin that held his joints.

“Morbid melancholy,” Trace said, firing up a tightly rolled joint. “I think I’ll use that as a title someday.”

“You already did.” Marcel smiled. “That trade magazine piece about people profiting from dead celebrities.”

“Oh right.” He took in a lungful of smoke and passed the joint to Marcel. “I forgot about that one. You’re my biggest fan, aren’t you, Marcel?”

“I keep up with your work,” Marcel replied nonchalantly, bringing the joint to his thin lips. Trace noted that Marcel’s fingers were always stained with indelible red ink from the Sharpee he wielded as an editors tool.

“Am I any good?”

“You’re better than most.”

Trace nodded thoughtfully. Better than most was acceptable.

“What’s really going on, Trace?”

“Nothing’s going on, Marcel. I mean, I’m adjusting to being completely single for the first time in fifteen years but other than that everything’s cool. I just want to go to Rockville and get — “

“Stop with this craziness about dancing on Fitzgerald’s –”

“Not dancing. Drinking. Getting drunk. On Fitzgerald’s grave. In Rockville, Maryland.”

Marcel passed the joint across the desk.

“I met this guy in a bar on Hollywood Boulevard last week,” Trace started.

Marcel threw a wry smile in Trace’s direction.

“What? You can’t meet interesting people in a bar, Marcel? Anyway, I stopped in for a beer and I had a copy of “Gatsby” with me.”

“Do you always bring reading material to bars? Doesn’t that inhibit the social process?”

“Quite the opposite, Marcel. It?s a sure conversation starter. You need to get out more often. So, I’m sitting there having a Red Hook and leafing through “Gatsby”, trying to remember what it was old Owl Eyes says at Gatsby?s funeral –”

“Poor sonofabitch,” Marcel quoted from memory. “It was also what Dorothy Parker said when she viewed Fitzgerald?s body.”

“Uh-huh. So there’s a guy sitting there, kind of a nondescript fellow, around thirty maybe, and we start talking about Fitzgerald and it turns out this guy went to Richard Montgomery High School, which is in Rockville, Maryland, right off a major road called Rockville Pike.”

“Wasn’t there a novel called “Rockville Pike?”

“Yes, by Susan Coll. Am I going to get through this pitch without interruption? Christ, Marcel.”

“I’m sorry, Trace. Go ahead.”

Trace fumbled in his bag for his wirebound memo book and leafed through it manically until he found the tattered pages carrying his hastily-drawn notes.

“On one side of the pike there’s the high school campus, this guy tells me. If you walk up the campus and cross the pike, there’s a very small church on a very, very small hill.”

He checked his notes for a moment before proceeding.

“To the left of the church there?s a small graveyard on the hill. It’s not protected by any gates or stone wall or anything. You can just walk up in it. All the grave stones are small, he tells me, except for one towards the back center. It towers above all the others, and that’s Fitzgerald’s. The headstone stands up in the traditional upside down u-shape, and then a slab of stone lays flat with an inscription from “Gatsby”. Scott and Zelda’s names are on the headstone.”

Trace lit the joint again and took another huge toke while studying his notes.

“Here’s the thing, Marcel, here’s the fucking story, okay? His creative writing teacher used to take the class to write by the stone sometimes when the weather was nice. He said all the kids that were into literature were fascinated to have his stone right there; so whenever they passed through the graveyard — which was pretty often, since the short-cut from the school to the subway station was directly through the graveyard ? they would leave a token of esteem, a cigarette or a joint or sometimes they’d plan ahead and get him a bottle of something. He said they assumed other kids took them as they passed as needed, and left their own gifts when they could.”

Marcel accepted the joint and stared at Trace blankly. “I’m sorry. I don’t see the story here.”

“What? Kids leaving joints and bottles of gin as talismans on Fitzgerald’s headstone? You don’t see the story?”

“What’s really going on, Trace?”

Trace closed the notebook and slumped in the chair.

“Nothing, for Christ’s sake, nothing’s going on.”

Trace looked around the cramped loft with disdain.

“When’re you going to get a real office? Do you know how much I hate driving to Long Beach?”

Marcel smiled. “Ah yes. It’s all about Trace, isn’t it?”

Marcel scribbled out a check for $200 and passed it across the desk to Trace.

“The poem was great. I knew you could do it.”

“It was shit.”

“No, it’s very good. I love the title: “Bogart Sleeps Here”.”

“The title’s good. The verse is shit. I’ve always been good with titles. I wonder what that’s all about?”

Marcel hiked his shoulders. “Maybe you should have been a stone cutter.?”

“Headstones? Now who’s the one being melancholy?”