Free Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales by Mark O'Donnell Page B

formal, Garb,” I told her.I’ve been reading how successful people don’t take guff.
    “And you don’t have to be so informal,
Sheel
,” she said. Instead of Sheila. I guess she thought that was a comeback. “You might try wearing a dress or some makeup. Good grooming is the first step toward actual celebrity.” I pity her. She still hasn’t accepted that the Method and rock and roll changed all that forever.
    Right after the meet-who-you-can-and-accept-not-meeting-Madonna pledge, one of the Cynthias (the one who works at the Bureau of Not Yet Missing Persons) started crying because she’s finally faced the fact that Liz and Eddie will never reconcile. She’s very slow at working these things through. Then the other Cynthia started crying about how hard it is to keep tabs on ex-Menudo members, especially since she doesn’t speak Spanish. It’s her own fault. If you’re going to climb that mountain, you’ve got to do the work. No wonder real fans are a dying breed—people are getting too lazy for obsession.
    Of course Garbo, in that condescending way of hers, tried to distract everyone by firing trivia questions at us. Not just the standard year-of-birth stuff, or even “Name the Seven Dwarfs,” but “Name three or more rejected
suggestions
for the Seven Dwarfs’ names.” They’re not strictly celebrities in the corporeal sense, so I resented it—especially with a Cynthia still crying—but Garbo just barreled ahead and rattled off a few, like Hungry and Brackish and Biggo Ego, and who could contradict her? Apparently she had an aunt who slept with a Disney animator. But, shealways adds, all they did was sleep. There were studio rules.
    I have to give that particular Cynthia credit—she did rally. She not only named the Seven Dwarfs (no big feat unless you’re racked with sobs like she was) but got into a sort of ecstatic delirium and named the entire cast of
The Magnificent Seven
, including Horst Buchholz.
    Then poor Gary with the two monocles started in again. He’s hung up exclusively on the long-dead ones, like Cleopatra and Caruso. I tried to get him interested in Martha Stewart, but I think he
wants
to be hurt. At least it is
possible
I could meet Danny Sullivan. It is
possible
he would like me despite my problem ear, and change his ways. Gary is
never
going to meet Cleopatra, unless you believe in a Heaven where Cleopatra has lost all sense of standards. I told him to face the real world. He started crying then, too. All in all, a good meeting.
    Message on my machine from Maurice: Do I want to go to a party with famous scientists on Saturday? Do I like them? Someone in Toxics invited him. I want to be all I can be, but I don’t want to mislead Maurice.
TUESDAY:
 
    Saw Sigourney Weaver on the street again, on my way to work. She was with a couple of people who were talking intensely. They must want something from her. I feel sorry for her.
    After our fire drill turned out to be real, I walked home via Broadway, past the OTB, and I think I saw Dr. Robert Jarvik, the artificial-heart man who’s married to the real brain, but I’m not sure. My medical knowledge is spotty. It may have been that dentist who poses in the underwear ad. I have much to learn.
WEDNESDAY:
 
    Had to go to the mailroom for Liquid Paper. Maurice still wants to get serious, but I told him I’d never heard of him, except from him, though once I saw his name posted on the United Way Delinquency Donor sheet. He said that at least
he’d
heard of
me
, and we could build on that. I told him it would be like a tree being famous in the woods when no one’s around. He just stood there, kind of bathed in flashes of green light from the Xerox machine. He said I was dazzled by the sunlight on a swimming pool I’d never own, and then he pounded his fist on the postage meter ($3.40 wasted) and called me a groupie. How quickly love turns to hate! Look at the young royals and whoever.
    On the way home I thought I saw Matt Dillon’s