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Zanzibar, Singapore, Rio, Bali, Hong Kong. Utopia, Morocco (baby, why don’t we go?). A whole Beach Boys song’s worth of exotic locales, against a green screen, for the silver screen, and with the same melodies, different words.
Some said filler and some said fluff, but Rocky knew they were entertainment, and that’s what mattered. That’s what people needed. And he had some very nice bourbon. That’s what he needed. Besides Bernie, who was waiting, back in some other, nicer, place, where the bugs didn’t throw themselves into your car’s grill. Bernie, who had called him earlier and said, “Hurry back.”
The war was over, the good guys had won, and Rocky was allowed to sometimes let a little loose.
“Cor,” he said loosely, turning to a blonde who was usually all angles but now seemed quite pleasantly fuzzy, “We’re—in—a—road—movie. To BER-LINNNNN.”
“No,” she said, “Really? I think—I think this is Kansas, darling. It looks too much like Kansas to be the Continent.”
“Is Germany the Continent? It seems—not continental. If Germany is the continent, so is Kansas. They’re each on a continent. Continental. Like my suits. Continentally speaking.”
She hummed noncommittally.
“A ROAD MOVIE.”
“But the car never actually moves, Rocky, darling. You know that, right? It’s only in editing, and then only the background shots move. It’s really quite nauseating.”
“I’M MOVING.”
“You’re falling, darling, but only because you’re drunk.”
“NOT DRUNK.”
“Just a little, babe. C’mon, give me the glass.”
“BOURBON.”
“Kentucky’s finest, doll, but Kentucky is a long way away, and they’re not gonna take it real personal if you let just a little of it go down the drain instead of your gullet, ‘k? Hand it here, babe.”
Rocky was a gentleman. A quintessential, old school gentleman songster, of the very first order, and far be it from him to deny a lady anything, particularly when she so temptingly waved a bar of chocolate in his face. He exchanged the bourbon for the candy, and called it a fair trade. Except…
“Is this fair trade, Cor? You know I can’t eat it if they’re exploiting the cocoa beans.”
“The laborers, doll, you mean the laborers. And I’m sure they’re all well-compensated for their labor. Eat.”
Rocky looked mournfully at the chocolate, 90% of which he had eaten before she finished her first sentence. “No, I mean the beans. Nobody thinks about the beans, Cor, why is that? How is that fair?”
“It’s not, doll. But life never is.” She chucked him under the chin, slid him a bottle of water, and left him with his thoughts about the plight of the underappreciated cocoa bean.
“I’m so sorry,” he said to the candy wrapper earnestly as he licked the last remnants of chocolate from the corners of his mouth, “You taste like a thousand cocoa beans, a million cocoa beans. You deserve to have your voice heard. Representation! Without taxation. Yes. You were once so wild, so free. Oh, little cocoa bean.”
Rocky had once been a little less wild and free, himself. That is, he had once been tied up by more contractual restrictions than you could shake a stick (or a rather vicious entertainment lawyer) at.
“What were you thinking, Rocky?” his agent had wailed, when presented with the contract. “You’ve signed on for EIGHT of these movies. Even Bob Hope himself stopped at seven! And that was a good four more than anyone needed!”
“The eighth is a retrospective,” Rocky said with great dignity. “Exploring the work he did to encourage the troops. Y’know, during the war. The Great One. It’s Road to Berlin, Bernie, it’s gonna win me an Oscar for sure. I couldn’t just let that go just because the other seven were part of the package.”
“It’s going to keep you tied up in production indefinitely, Rocky! Until you’re old and gray and have lost the only thing that keeps you marketable!”
Bernie was a great agent, but sometimes a bit melodramatic, Rocky thought.
“Bernie, Bernie, my man, you know my charisma’s only gonna sharpen with age. Like cheese, and Richard Gere.”
“I meant your abs, Rocky.”
“And those are in great shape, too. Wanna see?”
Bernie turned away, shaking his head sadly. “My nana told me, ‘Don’t go to Hollywood, Bernie, it’ll ruin your soul and rot your teeth.’ But she never warned me about the people like you.”
“Bernie! I’m insulted. We’re buddies, man. When have I ever done you wrong?”
Bernie glared as intimidatingly as he could manage. He shook the sheaf of papers. “All my work, ruined! Because you heard some shill mention Bob Hope, and you heard Oscar instead of straight-to-TV special.”
Rocky smiled broadly. “My hearing’s always been ace, Bernie. That’s what they tell me. When we were filming Gorilla, P.I III: Out on a Limb—you remember? The director, what’s-his-name, he said, ‘Rocky, you gem, all I gotta do is whisper something, and you give me all you got.’”
Bernie began pulling out what little hair he had left. “So what other schmucks got roped into this Hindenburg of a nostalgia trip? They picked a porn star for Dorothy Lamour’s role, didn’t they? Oh, the sacrilege of some casting director seeing that name and thinking, gee, I’ve heard that before, oh, how about Kitty L’Amour?”
“I don’t think that’s a real porn star, Bernie,” Rocky chided. “Not that I know every porn star, of course, just…”
Bernie’s eyes closed in the familiar denial that was just the first (ongoing, interminable) stage of acceptance. “Just enough to fill a few mansions.”
“And a private island,” Rocky added helpfully. “Don’t forget the private island—it features centrally in many of my fantasies.”
“Which I can only hope to one day have an encyclopedic knowledge of.”
Rocky nodded solemnly. “So you can fill in, when I forget. Like, I was telling Corrie about that one dream I’d had, when we—you and me, and Elvis, you remember?—were all up at the Pearly Gates, about to meet Saint Peter, and he said—I couldn’t remember, and Corrie, she seemed to think it was a terrible story, to leave her hanging there.”
“He said, ‘Of all the damned people I’ve ever met, you just might be the nicest,’” Bernie groaned. “And then he gave you the Medal of Freedom because you reminded him of Bob Hope. Oh, Christ, of course you signed on for this train wreck of a saga.”
Bernie paused for a moment, then, eyes widening. “Wait, Corrie? Please, god, tell me you don’t mean Corrie Rayburn.”
Rocky’s smile was blindingly uncomforting.
“I can’t get you out of this contract,” Bernie’s if he can’t manage it no one can lawyer friend said (over drinks, at a bar, as all important business is done). “It’s airtight.”
“Oh, good,” Rocky said. “I didn’t want out, anyway. It’s just, Bernie, he’s all, ‘You can’t back out as easy as you drove in,’ and gloom-and-doomy, but I think it’s gonna be great.”
“A cinematic masterpiece,” the lawyer nodded, straight-faced. “A real tour de force.”
“A real tour de Berlin, you mean!” cackled Rocky. “A road movie, Bernie! Bernie, we’re in a road movie! Another one, for the road!”
And Bernie tipped another glass back, shuddering as he wondered what he was even drinking at this point. He thought, wistfully, of the cars driver’s ed teachers were given. With their own brake pedals. That’s all he ever asked for, from his clients. Just a little control of the brakes, for when they didn’t know what they were doing. He didn’t ask to be somebody’s Svengali, or even to take the wheel; far be it from him to mold and shape anyone. He just wanted to make sure they didn’t all crash and burn. But no, here he was, tied up in the trunk (figuratively, for the moment). Whistling in the dark.
“Another, for the road,” he toasted to the air. Rocky, the bastard, had left him behind again, in the kind of place that’s all low lights, loud music, and inscrutable faces, where friends don’t leave friends they’d like to see alive again. The bartender’s smirk said it all, and yet the bill when he cashed out managed to say even more.
“Dead,” Bernie muttered. “He’s dead. I’m dead. We’re all—we’re all dead, John.”
The bartender looked at him blankly. “My name’s not John.”
“Everyone’s name is John,” Bernie said, “except mine, and Rocky’s, and everyone else’s. But—John. There’s a lot of Johns, John.”
And then Bernie and his credit card and the shambles of his professional career swayed out onto the streets. The streets with their strangely uneven sidewalks and unfortunately-placed curbs. Curse the roads. Curse the cities. Curse the client, with his superiorly sculpted face, with its highly photogenic cheekbones and those sweeping eyelashes that conned moviegoers into thinking him talented.
The main road was faintly lit strip in the distance, and Bernie was all out of steam. “To Berlin,” he slurred to a cab driver.
“Bernie!” Rocky cried exultantly, popping out (from an alley, hair askew, as in the aftermath of certain important business). “Were you leaving already? We should ride together, man. Just, here, hold this glass for me a sec, would you?”
Bernie heard the cab driver’s protests (“Open container, no open container! Not in my cab!”), but they didn’t mean much at the time, and only when they sat in the town’s jail did Bernie realize that yet another thing had been Rocky’s fault.
Rocky was predictably unconcerned.
“Road movie, Bernie! What would it be without at least one arrest?”
“You’re not filming yet! This is real life! Real arrest records! Real fines!”
“Real publicity!”
Bernie thought about that. Shrugged, cuddled up next to a strangely-smelling stranger, and began to whistle. Where the guitar and tambourine accompaniment came in, he wasn’t sure, but they fit in nicely, and by the time the keyboard was ramping up, everyone seemed to realize they’d been co-opted, somewhere along the way, into something epic.
This, Bernie thought, is how viral marketing is done.
And as the jailhouse song began—because every good movie needs at least one set piece in a jail, with hands gripping at bars seductively, and the faint percussive rattle of chains in the background—Bernie thought maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe the shoddy production team would rush everything through, and it’d be over before he knew it. Maybe Corrie Rayburn really had recovered from that psychotic break and returned to fighting form. Maybe Bob Hope wouldn’t turn over in his grave (rest his soul) and ruin any chances Bernie ever had of making it past the Pearly Gates when the time really came.
It would be years before Bernie completely lost the optimism of that moment, when the hot breath of a soon-to-be-convicted-but-not-altogether-unattractive-n’er-do-well was close in his ear. It would be over a decade before he lost the last of his hair, and hobbled into the premiere of Road to Berlin, a bitter and broken man (the happiest he’d ever been in his life).
It would only be three months before he found himself arrested again (again, Rocky’s fault), and barely four and three-quarters before he found himself confessing his undying love to a client he hated in equal measure.
“Aww, Bernie, ya big lug,” Rocky said affectionately. “I knew it. I told Cor—we’re tight like that, now, real buddies, and when she’s not seeing the little green spacemen, she’s the coolest of cool—I told her, 'Bernie and me, we’re one for the ages.'”
And Bernie, he still got a little twitchy at the mention of Corrie Rayburn, because she’d been responsible for half of his steadily growing rap sheet and at least twenty-eight percent of his gray hair, but he tried to look past that and graciously accept the sentiment. He grunted.
“Too romantic, you ain’t, Bernie,” Rocky grinned, “but heck if it doesn’t work for me anyway.”
“Maybe,” Bernie said dryly, “it has to do with those many times you’ve been knocked out ‘for the sake of your craft.’”
“Realism, it’s important. They say so, you know—and by They, I don’t know who I mean, but They might be…something, you know?”
Bernie didn’t know at all, but that was probably half the charm of it, so he hopped on the merry-go-round anyway, and the world spun on.