With the money from the new government job, Randy rented a bachelor pad on Broadway—a generic commercial strip that was starting to move upscale as older apartment blocks were being knocked down to create new stores and office complexes, so Randy’s building was destined for the wrecking ball.
You could smell Randy’s place from the hall. It smelled like … happy skunks. And disinfectant. And something else I didn’t recognize. I sniffed again when we stepped inside. “What’s burning?” It smelled sort of like … flowers.
“Incense,” said Randy. I nodded sagely or perhaps patchoul-y, like I knew what incense was.
Randy’s bedroom had black light posters and dirtier porn magazines than I’d ever seen before. Playboy was risqué, Penthouse was raunchy, but Hustler was … the women in there scared me. Not only did none of them look like Sarah, they looked like if they met Sarah on the street they’d beat her up and steal her stuff.
I followed the bass line of Dark Side of the Moon into a living room that was basically a couch bed, a few tables, a stereo, a TV with a flaming red skull candle perched on top of it, and stacks of abandoned takeout food containers.
I started pacing in circles while Randy sucked on something that looked like a small blue aquarium designed to drive fish crazy. Then he offered the fish tank to me. I shook my head, he shrugged, sucked on it again, coughed, and tried to figure out what we’d do for the big show.
After the album was over and the only profound thought we came up with was that we needed another hot girl or two in the cast, Randy wanted a snack, so we decided to walk four blocks to the nearest 7-Eleven. Randy grabbed a big bag of neon orange-coloured cheese things. I tossed in a few quarters to feed my addiction and grabbed a Coke Slurpee. “We wanna be like Star Wars on stage,” I said as we walked back to the apartment.
“Bigger than Star Wars,” said Randy. “If this works it won’t just be a play, we’ll do the movie and then …”
I knew where he was going and I was already there, dreaming of coloured panels and glossy covers illustrated by Neal Adams, picturing the awesome cover of X-Men 59 with Cyclops standing alone against the Sentinels. “Comic books,” said Randy. And for the first time I knew we were soulmates. “Heavy Metal comic books.”
Okay, maybe not total soulmates. I preferred Marvel, or even DC, but sure, Heavy Metal would work.
“And cartoons.”
“Cartoons would be cool. I love cartoons.”
“So it’s not just a story,” I said.
“It’s an epic,” said Randy.
The next idea was mine. I wish it had been Randy’s, I really do, but it was mine. I was obsessed with The Lord of the Rings. George Lucas had announced that Star Wars was going to be a trilogy, too—maybe even a modern epic. And I’d just studied classical epics in English Lit. We were learning about Dante’s Inferno, so I knew proper epics were nine parts. They started in medias res—which was either Latin or English Lit for “in the middle of the story.” Nine parts. That’s why Lucas had labelled the first film in his Star Wars saga “Episode IV.” So maybe it wasn’t my fault. Maybe we should blame Lucas for convincing us that every great story had to be part of a trilogy, which meant our story had to be part of a trilogy. Yes, I absolutely blame George Lucas and his damned Jedi mind-tricks for the fact that the next words out of my mouth were “Let’s make it a trilogy!”
Randy loved the idea.
I loved the idea.
It was brilliant. It was obvious. If we were gonna be huge—if we were going to be the next Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and create a new mythology that would take over the world, it had to be a trilogy.
“So we know the ending,” I said. Every trilogy has the same ending. The final battle. The end of the quest. Good versus evil for control of The Force, the fate of the Shire, all the cosmic marbles. “But what’s part one?”
“Oryon’s story.”
“Oryon’s story. Cool.” I said “cool” a lot. I still say cool a lot. “What about Kyle?”
“He can be in it. We’ll need a few scenes with Santar—to set up episode two.” We went back to Randy’s place, he started rolling a joint, and I started pacing in circles again and asked Randy what Oryon’s story was.
“I dunno,” he said. “You’re the writer.”
For the showcase I didn’t have to worry much about plot, never mind character motivations, but to tell the whole story I needed to know the history of Medemptia and the origins of all our heroes and villains. Every hero needs an amazing secret origin story. But the less Randy gave me, the more fun I could have making it up myself. It was time to find out what I had to work with. “Let’s start with the magic,” I said. This time instead of asking for a list of all the tricks he had, I asked what tricks he always wanted to do, what we could build, what we could buy. “What’s the coolest stuff we can do?”
“Pretty much anything if we’ve got enough money. I’ve got some wild ideas. Stuff nobody’s ever seen before.” Randy started scrawling on a legal pad. I started pacing, trying to imagine the coolest trick in the world.
A few minutes later Randy passed me his notes. Then Randy lit his joint and was about to put it to his lips, when he stopped himself and offered it to me.
“That’s okay,” I said, waving him away.
“You sure you don’t want some?”
I shook my head.
“It’ll help you write.”
“It’s okay,” I said again.
“No problem,” said Randy. “More for me.” Randy inhaled, coughed, smiled.
“What’s the coolest trick you can imagine?” asked Randy.
I’d always loved escapes. When I first learned magic I’d practised with ropes and locks and handcuffs. I’d practised twisting my wrists so that if anyone ever put me in handcuffs or tied my wrists I’d be free in seconds. I knew about Houdini’s water escapes, the tricks Houdin did to convince a tribe in Africa that he was a God and pretty much everything Henning had ever done, but I’d never tried to dream up new illusions before.
Randy tried to help me by breaking down the basics. “There are really only a few tricks—appearances, disappearances, levitations, escapes, psychic stuff—everything else is pretty much a variation on the theme.” He’d scrawled down his favourites and decorated them with hand-drawn stars and lightning bolts. The more lightning bolts, the more he liked the trick.
Levitation.
Decapitation.
Walking through a mirror.
Transformation.
Fire appearance.
I could already picture the effects—and the audience’s reaction. “You can really do all this?”
“No problem.”
“Cool.”
“You sure you don’t want some?” Randy offered the joint again.
“No thanks.”
“How are you supposed to write this without drugs? I was stoned the whole time I wrote the first script.”
That explained a lot.
“I always figured you for a major stoner,” he said.
Everybody did. One night I’d been working late on the student paper and everybody started sharing their most humiliating drug experiences. Even our sponsor teacher joined in, talking about the time in college when she tried LSD, climbed on the roof of her apartment and was convinced she could fly. After everyone else told their stories, they turned to me. I was the editor. I had to have a story. A great