Nothing seemed to be going right for Emerson Waldie. Having awakened in a coffin was bad enough, but trying to get home again had proved to be a nightmare.
After his ride off the grounds in the workman’s truck, he’d picked up another ride, this time in an old, beat-up Dodge driven by an old, beat-up looking guy.
“You going to a Halloween party?” the man asked, Halloween being just a few days away.
Having no idea what the man was talking about, Waldie hadn’t answered. And since he hadn’t seen himself in a mirror, he didn’t know that he strongly resembled Count Dracula.
The fact was, Emerson Waldie had clearly been out of it. Whatever caused his deadly state, it left him feeling weak and frail. There was only one thing he wanted, and that was to get home.
‘Listen, fella,” Waldie said, addressing the man in a slurring way that suggested intoxication. “Would you drive me to my house in Beverly Hills? I’ll give you a hundred dollars. I’ll give you two hundred dollars.”
“Beverly Hills, huh?” the driver replied, playing Waldie along. “You probably live in one of those great big houses with all the cars and all the servants, right?”
“109777 Roxbury Drive,” Waldie said.
“You wouldn’t mean the Waldie place, now would you?” the man said, winking broadly at Waldie.
“That’s right,” Waldie said. “And I’m the Waldie who owns the Waldie place.”
“Gee,” the man said teasingly, “1 thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” Waldie asked. “What do you mean, dead? Just get me to my house and I’ll give you the money.”
The man, coming to a main intersection, decided that perhaps it was time to let the shoeless old drunk out of the car before he became a problem.
“Here you are, old-timer,” the driver said. “I’m dropping you off near a bus stop. You can get a bus to your place in Beverly Hills.”
It was only when Waldie was watching the car departing that he realized that he had no money. He didn’t have a wallet. And he didn’t have any identification. He didn’t even have a pair of shoes.
His most current need had been to sit down, which he did on a park bench, his heart pounding. People passing by seemed to pity him, but no one came over to ask if he was okay.
Finally a cop came along on his beat, and spotting Waldie, chased him off the bench. “Now get along with you,” the cop said with a distinct Irish accent. “Or I’ll run you in.”
“Don’t you understand?” Waldie asked, his parched tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth as he spoke, “I’m Emerson Waldie, the head of Grove Pictures.”
“Keep it up and I’ll run you in for making fun of the dead that way,” the cop said. “Now move!”
Waldie walked along, not knowing where. He hadn’t actually walked anywhere in years and he didn’t recognize this neighborhood. But he kept walking because now there were some smart-aleck kids on his trail heckling him.
In the distance were a bunch of stores. Waldie decided his best bet would be to get into one of them. Where it would be safe and where he might find a phone.
The kids were closing in on him so rapidly, he began to run. Making a mad dash across a busy road, he barely missed being knocked down by an army convoy truck. By the time he reached the other side of the street, he was completely out of breath and wheezing loudly. Rushing into a drug store, he found a pay phone. He had no money so he’d have to reverse charges in order to reach anyone at his home. How happy they’d be to hear that he was alive and well.
“Will you accept a call from Mr. Emerson Waldie?” the operator asked as soon as the phone was picked up at the other end. Waldie recognized the voice of his butler.
“Operator,” the butler said, “this is a crank caller. Mr. Waldie has done us all a favor and has dropped dead. Tell your caller that and good day!”
“Philip, Philip,” Waldie yelled into the phone, but both the butler and the operator had clicked off.
Waldie tried the number again and the new operator informed him that he couldn’t be Emerson Waldie because everyone knew that Emerson Waldie had died of a heart attack the day before and that what he was doing masquerading as Waldie was very mean and hurtful to the grieving family.
“But I am Emerson Waldie,” Waldie insisted. “And I don’t know anything about dying. I’m just as alive as you are. Please, you’ve got to help me.”
“Disgraceful,” the operator snorted and hung up.
Leaving the phone booth, Waldie quickly walked over to the newspaper stand. On the front page of the Los Angeles Times were two photographs. One was his and the other’s was Maggie Graym’s. Hers was a lot larger which made Waldie angry. He wanted to know why he and Maggie were on the front page of the L.A. Times and why her picture was larger than his.
Without his glasses, there was no way he could read the copy surrounding each photo, and it was only with extreme difficulty that he was able to make out the headline above his own. What he read shocked him.
“EMERSON WALDIE DEAD,” the headline announced.
“But I’m not dead,” Waldie said loudly, not bothering to read Maggie’s headline. “I’m not dead, I’m not dead, I’m not dead, I’m not dead.”
It was then that a store clerk grabbed him roughly by the back of his collar.
“Yeah,” the clerk said, but you will be if you don’t get the hell out of my store, Mac. He then propelled Waldie rapidly to the door and pitched him out onto the street.
The push sent him flying into some garbage cans which was both a bad thing and a good thing. A bad thing because he grazed himself on the elbow and knee. And a good thing because he knocked over one of the garbage cars out of which fell, amongst a ton of onion skins and rotting fish innards, a decrepit-looking pair of workman’s boots.
True, the boots were at least two sizes too large for Waldie and had flapping soles with enormous holes in them and were scuzzy and smelly, but for Waldie, they represented a way for him to be mobile.
Waldie fought the impulse to throw up at the horrible odor coming from the laceless boots, as well as the feeling of hopeless humiliation as he gingerly put his feet into them and started walking toward what he hoped was the direction of home.
Several hours later, after endless trudging, Waldie seemed to recognize the area he was in and weakly forged ahead toward Beverly Hills. He was incredibly hungry and thirsty, but more than that, he was extremely fatigued. He could have happily laid down on the side of the road and dropped off to sleep. But still he trudged on and entered, by evening, Beverly Hills. He was determined, if he never did another thing, to reach his home and his bed.
It occurred to him as he dragged himself along that he couldn’t walk through Beverly Hills without being seen by the police that patrolled the area on a regular basis. Any person walking in the vicinity of residential Beverly Hills was subject to bodily removal from the area, as well as harassment and, possibly, jail.
Waldie felt that if he was picked up by the police, the very police that he and other prominent Beverly Hills residents had insisted comb the streets for undesirables, he would never reach home again. He knew that no one would believe that he was Emerson Waldie, but rather, a raving old man. He’d probably wind up in the state mental hospital and never be heard of again.
For that reason, he moved along with extreme caution, stealing across lawns and hiding behind trees and hedges from the black and white patrol cars that moved slowly from street to street.
Nearly dead now from exhaustion, Waldie finally approached the cul-de-sac that wound around in an upward spiral until it reached the gates of his twenty-five acre estate. Only there were no gates.
Waldie thanked providence that he’d recently ordered the massive steel gates taken down and donated to the steel drive in aid of the war effort. It had merely been a publicity stunt to show himself off to the world as a concerned, self-sacrificing patriot.
The lack of gates meant that Waldie, ever on the lookout for the security police he’d hired, was able to make his way past the twelve room guest house with its own pool and tennis courts and down along the private lake with its long pier that was situated about a thousand yards from the big house.
An asphalt drive led to the house. Waldie, thinking it would never end, eventually reached the highly ornate structure, a replica of the Taj Mahal.
He moved around to the side of the house where there was a great deal of activity going on. There were a number of trucks up there, several of which belonged to a Hollywood caterer. What in the hell was a caterer doing up there, Waldie wondered.
And then he remembered: this was the day he’d been buried and, of course, Enid would be obliged to put on some sort of open house for the mourners. After all, that was the custom, to feed friends and relatives after such an ordeal. But this was ridiculous; there was enough food being unloaded to feed Patton’s army.
From where Waldie stood, behind a clump of bushes, he could see right into the brightly lit windows of the kitchen and main dining room. Enid was going from room to room issuing orders to the many people rushing around her. It was as if she were directing an epic movie. Her voice cracked out instructions regarding the banquet table, the bandstand, the balloons...the balloons???
It had now occurred to Waldie that this was not going to be just a gathering of people coming together to honor him for the great and generous and loving and warm man that he had been, a man who would be sorely missed for years to come. This was going to be some kind of fantastic celebration!
It was like...like people were really happy that he was dead. He winced at the sight of a South American rhumba band assembling on the patio near the pool, its members wore sombreros, ruffle-sleeved shirts and colorful vests. And when they began to rehearse, Enid could be seen in the window swaying to and fro, this way and that, to the hot rhythm. For a few moments she just danced around by herself, her hips moving with the beat.
And then she accosted a waiter carrying a heavy tray of dishes and began interrupting his work so that he would dance with her. She was laughing like Waldie had never seen her laugh, and she was teasing the waiter, making him lose his balance so that he had to put the tray down on the table rather than drop it on the floor.
Waldie watched fascinatedly as his wife, the staid Enid, flirted and danced with the waiter who was stiff and uncomfortable-looking at first, but who was now really getting into it.
Enid, laughing wildly, clicked her fingers over her head just as the sultry Rita Hayworth had done while dancing with
Anthony Quinn in Blood and Sand. She took little flamenco-type steps in front of, and then around, the waiter who was busy clapping his hands and shouting “ole” all over the place.
Waldie couldn’t get over this scene taking place with his own wife, in his own dining room, in his own house, and with his own body supposedly not even cold yet.
Stepping angrily out of the bushes, Waldie walked past a few female workers busy setting up outdoor tables and chairs. They couldn’t help but notice the funny little man in the oversized army boots that caused him to walk like Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush.”
“She must have hired a clown for the party,” one of them commented as Waldie walked by.
“Yeah,” another agreed. “This is a big occasion for her what with the old tyrant dead. This is going to be the party to end all parties.”
“What I don’t get,” still another worker said, “is how she rates all this food, considering there’s a war on and everything. Guess with her money she can pull strings and get anything she wants. And from what I hear, with the husband out of the picture, she’s in for millions more.”
“Over my dead body,” Waldie muttered to himself as he entered the house. He shuffled through the enormous kitchen as fast as his big boots would carry him. A legion of chefs and their assistants worked feverishly preparing the food for the party. There were roasts, turkeys and ducks cooking away, and on the long butcher-block tables were the salads, soups, pastries, breads, desserts.
On one such table was a gigantic layer cake. It had to be about six feet by six feet. A chef, working on it, artistically captured the likeness of four faces. Waldie recognized Hitler’s, Hirohito’s, Mussolini’s...and his.
Watching the cake being created as if in a trance, Waldie saw the chef then bring the frosting case down upon his own cake-face, laying over it a red, creamy line. A moment later a second line was applied crossing the first one so that there was a big X over his likeness.
As a final touch, the chef scrawled in huge strokes across the top of the cake the words: One Down, Three To Go.
This was too much! Waldie angrily pushed open the dining room door planning to surprise the merry widow in the middle of her dance. Only she’d disappeared.
Just then Waldie caught sight of her as she walked through the wide archway on the other side of the dining room. She’d removed her shoes and was moving slowly and sensually toward the staircase. With the excited waiter trailing behind her.
It was obvious what Enid had in mind. A “quickie” before the celebration.
“Well, we’ll just see about that,” Waldie said aloud. He started across the dining room but hadn’t walked five paces when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. Turning, he saw the hand belonged to an unsmiling security officer.
“And where, may I ask, are you off to, old timer?” the officer asked.
“Take your hands off me,” Waldie growled. “I’ll have you thrown off my property.”
“Oh, so this is your property, is it?” the officer said as if weighing up whether or not this guy was going to be any trouble.
“That’s right,” Waldie said and started walking across the room again. Obviously, this guy was going to be trouble. He’d only got another step before he found his arms pinned behind him.
“Now we’re just going to turn around and march right out of here,” the security officer said.
Which is when Waldie started bellowing and twisting his body and kicking at the officer.
His rebellion didn’t last long, however. The officer, used to this kind of disturbance, removed the nightstick from his belt and let Waldie have one swift taste of it over the top of his head.