Ladies and Gentlemen, Hollywood Home’s Tour has arrived at The Manor Assisted Living House for Disabled Adults. As you can see, this white-gabled mansion rivals the opulence of any property in Beverly Hills, and its twelve wooded acres are unsurpassed. Located just minutes from Hollywood’s largest movie lots, The Manor boasts as residents several important actors, most notably, Chris Burke, who you may remember as “Corky” on the hit television show, “Life Goes On.”
Chapter One
“Da plane! Da plane!” yells Johnathan while he jumps foot-to-foot. That makes everybody laugh. We all call him Jonno. He is about four feet tall and bald, but that’s pretty much the least of his problems. Every time the Hollywood Home’s bus pulls up to the gate, to point out where Corky lives, Jonno jumps up and down and points at the bus. Da Plane! He always yells that. People on the tour bus point their tiny binoculars at him. We always laugh, every time. I like that about us. Even Chris Burke laughs, but we notice that he hasn’t touched his muffin, and he has already ordered his second martini.
But the martini came squirting out of Chris Burke’s nose which made him start yelling at Jonno for making him laugh. That made us laugh even harder! Then Phillip stood up, slowly of course, and just started yelling “Fuck you! Fuck you!” flipping off the bus with his long, crooked, middle finger. That was new, and that made us laugh even harder!
I wonder what they thought about us on the red bus. Like, were they kind of jealous of us for having so much fun in the sun? Like movie stars? Chris Burke is still wearing his bathrobe. Since the show canceled, he never changes. I wonder what they think of that? I mean his bathrobe, not the show. I like to think of things like that, like what other people must be thinking.
We stop laughing when we hear the patio door open, and then hear somebody slam the door. We all know who that is.
“What are you monkeys doing out here?” she says with her arms crossed.
Of course it is old Nurse Kratchet, we call her that anyways. Corky made it up, he makes up names for everybody. It was like some alarm goes off in old Kratchet’s head. Every time we start to have fun, she ruins it. It’s weird really, how she does that. We hate her. I think Jonno hates her the most because he gets mad if you try to boss him around.
Jonno returns to his seat and slumps down. That’s just how Jonno is. If he isn’t doing shenanigans, making you laugh with his rubbery face, then he looks sad. Lots of the residents here are that way. I’m not saying that Jonno is actually sad when his face goes like that, because I keep thinking that it might just be the way his face normally looks. I really don’t know. I’ll try to remember to ask him.
Besides Jonno and me, there is Corky, otherwise known as Chris Burke, but, whatever you do, don’t let Chris Burke hear you call him Corky, unless you want to see a really scary sight.
Besides Jonno and Corky and me, there is my best friend, Phillip, whose face looks mostly normal except one of his eyes is crooked or something. He is not sad, even though he sometimes looks that way, and I know that for sure, because I have asked him.
We are some kind of family or gang. We have lived here together for a really long time. We are like the only people who knew Corky before he was Corky, and boy, let me tell you, that is that a strange tale to tell, but that is not what this story is about. This story is about murder.
That got your attention, didn’t it!
Hello, my name is Arnold Hemingway. You know, like the Hemingway, and if you guessed I was a writer too, just like my Grampapa, then you were right.
Chapter Two
It was pretty much a totally normal afternoon when the phone started ringing during Jerry Springer. Chris Burke was taking his nap, which he always does at exactly when Judge Judy starts, because Chris Burke hates judges. I don’t remember why, but he is usually pretty drunk by then anyways. He sleeps through Judge Judy, then through another Judge Judy, then through The Jerry Springer Show. He doesn’t like Jerry Springer because Chris Burke hates people from Chicago. I don’t remember why either. I will try to remember to ask him. Chris Burke has very strong feelings about things.
When Chris Burke wakes up from his nap, first he goes to the bathroom, then he is usually back on the couch with a freshie from Rosa, which is what he calls his martini, for the beginning of The Maury Show.
Nobody is as good as Chris Burke at guessing who the baby-daddy is on Maury.
Chris Burke says it must be a gift, and I believe it. He is always right! He is definitely the smartest one of our gang, and our leader, and he is a real celebrity, which kind of makes us celebrities. Everybody loves Chris Burke, except for one person, and I think you know who that is already.
The phone just kept ringing.
Jonno ran over to the stool, climbed it, and pulled it off the handle.
“What!” he said. He was kind of irritated because he was missing the show.
Then came a tiny voice.
Then Jonno said, “Nobody can wake him up!” He started shaking his head furiously.
Then came more of the tiny voice.
Then Jonno said, “If you wake him up, it is not pretty!”
Those were true things to say about Chris Burke, so I figured that was who the tiny voice wanted.
I was curious, so I walked over there to Jonno. He held the receiver away from his ear, so I could hear the tiny voice, too. It was a woman.
She was talking way, way, way too fast.
We had no idea what she was saying at all, so Jonno just stuck it on the table and we walked away.
Of course, Kratchet came in wanting to know who it was and whatever, but they were gone.
“Fuck you,” said Phillip, which everyone knew meant wrong number.
Phillip was sitting on a chair in front of the couch right up to the TV. He had to sit that way because only one of his eyes work, and even that one isn’t so hot. He turned and winked back at us with that pretty-good eye, so Jonno and me knew we should go sit back on the couch and keep our lips zipped.
Phillip is the second smartest one, I would say. He is definitely the richest. His mother is a famous movie star. Well, she was, but now she’s old, and she doesn’t come here anymore. She was never very nice anyways. I can’t think of her name, but she was really famous, I’ll ask Phillip to remind me, if I can remember.
All of us are like that. I guess rich and famous is the word. Except that Jonno didn’t come from famous people, pursay, but they knew a lot of famous people because they were producers. If you don’t know that much about Hollywood, let me tell you, those are the people who pay for the movies. People don’t think about that, Jonno says, but movies aren’t free, and that is what his parents did. They’re both dead now. I will always remember that because they were killed in a car accident on the way to visit Jonno, and we saw the ambulances. Jonno always brags that he will never have to work again, and that makes us laugh because none of us ever worked anyways. Except Chris Burke, of course. He would be so slumped-over and grouchy when he got home from Life Goes On. He would say, guys, it isn’t fun to act, it’s hard. And we believed him because he looked so tired and so sad.
Meanwhile, Kratchet was walking around, standing in front of us, on at a time, with her arms crossed. Looking at us with her squinty black eyes.
“Next time, you little monkeys just let me answer the phone,” she barked.
She’s like a dog that follows you around trying to pee on everything.
Chapter Three
Chris Burke was not happy when he woke up from his nap.
We weren’t surprised because he was never happy when he wakes up.
Our favorite part of the Jerry Springer Show is the end, which is called Jerry’s Final Thought. That’s when Jerry tells us which people were good, and who was bad. Sometimes we could hear Chris Burke peeing during Jerry’s final thought, which was irritating.
At the end of show, me and Jonno and Phillip would all say together, Jerry’s final words, “Till next time, take care of yourselves and each other.” Then we laughed, and gave each other high-fives. That was usually when Chris Burke would shuffle into the living room and yell for Rosa. We never say anything to him or even look up. Everybody knows it’s better to leave Chris Burke alone until after his third martini.
Let me tell you how things are in the Manor. We live in a wing, which is a lot better than what most people get, and everybody knows it’s because we’re rich. Our wing has four bedrooms, one for each of us. Phillip and I are on one side of the hallway, and Jonno and Chris Burke are on the other. We keep the doors open when we are not in our rooms. We share the bathroom, which has two showers and two sinks. We have a kitchen at one end, which is the far end, and then on the other end, we have our TV room.
We have a maid, her name is Rosa, and she makes Chris Burke’s martinis just how he likes them, and he gives her a fresh twenty dollar bill every day. Rosa loves Chris Burke. Sometimes she stands behind him and combs his hair on the patio. I wish she would comb my hair, but I’m afraid to ask her, and everybody knows I’m the poorest.
And then we have old Kratchet, running around trying to ruin it for us.
We have a really nice TV that Jonno bought after when his parents hit that tree coming up here. I mean, it’s really, really big. I did not know they came that big, and when the men brought it in, I cried a little until I got used to it. I couldn’t tell if I was sad or happy. Phillip loved it right away, on account of his eye, and he won’t even look at the little TVs in the recreation room if we decide to play pool, which now that I think of it, we kind of stopped doing after we got the TV.
I have a friend who just has a regular room. I can’t remember his name now, but once I brought him in to see the TV, but I’ll never do that again on account of things Chris Burke said that I won’t repeat. Only Rosa and us are allowed on the wing now. And you know who else, but we have no choice about that.
Everyday we pretty much do the same thing.
Jonno always wakes up first. I don’t even know what he watches on TV.
When Phillip and I get up, he’s already there on the couch. There isn’t anything good on at 9 anyways, when me and Phillip wake up, so we usually watch cartoons until Chris Burke wakes up at 10.
Then we go outside on the patio.
Did I mention that we have a patio? It’s right outside the living room. That is where we see the bus from. But it doesn’t come exactly every day, it’s always kind of a surprise.
Rosa brings us coffee and bran muffins. She brings Chris Burke one martini, and then another martini. Then we talk and look at birds and stuff. Sometimes Jonno runs around in the yard and makes us laugh. Sometimes we can see other residents, ones that don’t have a wing, looking down sadly at us from their windows. That makes me sad, but Chris Burke says that is how it goes. He doesn’t feel sad about it, that’s for sure. But mostly, the patio is my favorite part of the day, unless it’s my birthday or Christmas or something.
When it rains outside or it’s too cold, we eat just inside the glass doors, and it doesn’t really matter because the bus doesn’t come on those days.
Did I describe the bus?
It’s red, and people sit on top of it.
Chris Burke says it’s a double-decker. Someday, I want to ride on a double-decker. Maybe me and Chris Burke could go in disguise, so people wouldn’t recognize him as Corky, and then we could see the Manor from the bus, and flip-off Phillip, and see Jonno jumping up and down from our tiny binoculars. That would be funny. I like to imagine things like that.
Sometimes Chris Burke gets letters from people he doesn’t even know. Sometimes Rosa brings it into him smiling, look Chris, she says, you have a fan letter. Sometimes that makes Chris Burke smile, but not lately.
Chapter Four
My favorite thing about Chris Burke is that every time somebody says How are you? he says the same exact thing, and it is the coolest thing you could ever say.
He says, “Living the dream, so-and-so, just living the dream.”
Except for so-and-so, put the person’s name, or if he didn’t know the name, just “man.” I’m not sure exactly what Chris Burke means by that, but I can tell that other people think he’s cool when he says it, and kind of wish they had said it first. Sometimes when Chris Burke is not around, I say it out loud to myself, and it sounds cool. But not as cool as when Chris Burke says it, not by a long shot.
Chris Burke regularly gets telephone calls. I don’t remember when, but I’m sure it was after Jonno hung up on that other call, when another call came in. Rosa answered and yelled for Chris Burke, who was sitting on the couch watching Entertainment Tonight, which he watched alone, for various reasons that I don’t want to get into here.
“Who!” Chris Burke said to Rosa.
“It’s your agent, Chris,” Rosa replied. She sounded excited.
Rosa is calling Chris Burke just Chris now. She just started doing it one day, and then nobody stopped her. Every time she says it, I wait to hear the word “Burke” but it doesn’t come. I think I’m finally getting used to it.
“What does she want!” Chris Burke said. He was irritated because he didn’t like it when people interrupted him during Entertainment Tonight.
“Chris, come to the phone, Honey,” Rosa said.
All three of our heads snapped from where we were sitting at the card table, because we had never heard anybody ever call Chris Burke “Honey!” We all three slowly looked over at Chris Burke, scared, to see what he was going to do. You will not believe this. Chris Burke just stood up and stomped over to the phone.
He took it from Rosa and put it up to his ear. The agent must have said How are you? because the next thing Chris Burke said made everybody happy.
“Living the dream, Liz, just living the dream.”
If Chris Burke was living the dream, that meant we were living the dream. Oh, we loved Chris Burke so much. We all looked at each other and nodded.
We couldn’t tell what was happening in the call, because Chris Burke turned his back to us. He just kept saying, “Okay, okay.” Usually Chris Burke gets mad when his agent calls, but this time, he was not mad. But what he was, nobody could tell. The whole time Rosa was standing there, like a giant, and smiling like she was crazy. It was very difficult to tell what was going on. Finally, Chris Burke handed the phone back to Rosa and turned back to face us.
He looked like he’d just seen a ghost. I swear he did not even glance at Paris Hilton waving on Entertainment Tonight as he slowly walked towards our card table, where we were busy playing dominoes. We all three froze with our hands out across the table, mid-play. We’d never seen Corky act this way, and whenever Corky did something surprising, it was never good.
But this time Chris Burke broke into a huge smile and said, “I’m back, boys, I’m back! Wooohoooo!”
Then Rosa ran over and hugged him, and picked him up and twirled him around, and finally put him back down. I saw Phillip was smiling now too, but Jonno and I had no way to tell what was going on. Back? Back where? We looked at each other and decided it must be good, so first I started clapping, and then Jonno joined, and then Phillip joined and then finally even Rosa and Chris Burke were clapping, and then we were all clapping together when suddenly the door slammed and I bet you can guess who stepped in.
Chapter Five
Confessions, Part One
It is time for me to make some confessions. First, once I had a girlfriend. When I was a boy. I went to a school called the Cuba Academy, and there was a girl there, and she was my girlfriend. That was the only time I met my Grampapa, and he wrote a story about her. I still have it. It’s called The Girlfriend. We wrote it together. I remember his beard the most, you could barely see his lips in that white fur, but he was warm, and he smelled both very bad and very good somehow, and he told me that one day I would be a great writer, just like him. And he also said, people like confessions. My Grampapa Hemingway said that to me, and I never forgot it. Also, did I mention I have Down Syndrome? All of us do, actually. And it wasn’t that I was lying really, it’s just that everybody already knows that, so why would it come up? Don’t worry, I’ll try to think of some better confessions, especially if the story gets boring.
Chapter Six
I guess when Chris Burke said he was “back” he meant to say he was “gone” because that is all he has been since that phone call. By the time Phillip and I are up, Chris Burke has left. Jonno says that a limousine driver comes to the door every morning. At night, we wait up for him, or try to, and sometimes he doesn’t get home until I don’t know how late because I am asleep. Rosa puts us in bed sometimes.
Rosa stays late a lot now. She says the studio is paying her to stay late and also to make sure that Corky, she calls him that now, behind his back, to make sure that Corky gets to bed on time. Jonno told her it is probably the producers that are paying her. She disagreed, but she doesn’t know the business like Jonno does.
One afternoon when we were sitting on the patio I asked Jonno, “When will Chris Burke be back? I mean, how long does the business take?”
“Nobody ever knows,” said Jonno, “it could be years.”
That was a very depressing thing to hear, and I noticed that even Phillip looked down.
The door slammed, but we didn’t care. But this time it was Rosa. “Why the long faces boys?” she asked. I noticed that Rosa had changed. She was wearing a dress instead of pants.
“Why do you think?” Jonno said. He was irritated.
“We miss Chris Burke,” I said.
“Miss him! Oh come on now! All he does is sulk around here drunk anyways. Maybe I should bring out a round of martinis?”
Jonno and I shook our heads no, we had learned our lessons about that. But Phillip, who I had never seen drink, said “fuck you” which we all knew meant yes.
“Why Phillip!” Rosa said, “I would have never guessed that you were the naughty one.”
Phillip blushed and Jonno and I glared at each other while Rosa walked away. Then we turned to Phillip.
“Why are you trying to be Chris Burke!” I demanded.
“Fuck you,” Phillip said. That made me mad, even though it is pretty much the only thing Phillip ever says, because we knew that this time that was all he meant.
“Well, we don’t like it,” I told him. Jonno agreed by shaking his head.
Rosa came back with the martini, and I noticed that when Rosa gave it to him, when she leaned over, that Phillip’s good eye darted around in her blouse! And it seemed like Rosa noticed but didn’t say anything!
Jonno had been falling apart. Without Chris Burke, he had nobody to entertain. Well, he had me and Phillip, but he said that wasn’t the same, and we kind of knew what he meant. Nobody comes to the window and looks down at us on the patio anymore. The tour bus came yesterday and Phillip and I looked over hopefully at Jonno, but he didn’t jump up and down and say De Plane, De Plane. Then the bus pulled away and left, and I wondered if they could tell that Chris Burke wasn’t actually there at the Manor, that he was gone.
“We have to get Chris Burke back,” I said to Phillip and Jonno. They nodded in agreement.
Chapter Seven
One thing that most people don’t know about Chris Burke is that he is a method actor. Now, you probably don’t know what that means, unless you know the business. A method actor is when you just always act like the character you are, even when you are watching TV, or in the kitchen, or anywhere. Yes, even in the bathroom.
For a long time, during Life Goes On, Chris Burke wouldn’t even talk to you if you didn’t call him Corky. Of course, now things couldn’t be more different, how he demands to be called by both his first and last name for some reason, but back then, you had to call him Corky, or else. That is what a method actor is.
Chris Burke is now a robot named Daniel Olivaw. You cannot tell him apart from a regular person because he is that good of a robot. He has a special skill called “analysis” and that means he can do three things. He can read other people’s thoughts, and he can tell whether people are lying or telling the truth.
“Daniel Olivaw,” I said to him on a rare Sunday together on the patio last week, “How are you?”
We all perked up to hear his answer, but he let us down.
“You-may-refer-to-me-simply-as-Daniel,” he replied in his new robot voice, “and-only-Chris Burke-says-that-other-thing.”
We were all get a little tired of the robot voice.
“When will Chris Burke be back?” I asked. I was talking very loud and slow to him for some reason. “Do you know?”
“Daniel-does-not-know-the-future,” Daniel Olivaw said in reply. “But-I-know-what-you-are-thinking.”
So far, Daniel Olivaw had not correctly guessed even one time what anyone was thinking.
“I-mean-feeling,” Daniel said. “I-know-what-you-are-feeling.”
“What?” I asked. He hadn’t guessed at anyone’s feelings yet, so I was a little curious if he could.
“I-think-you-are-sad-because-you-miss-Chris Burke.” Daniel Olivaw replied in his robot voice.
“Am not!” I answered. At first I felt bad, because I love Chris Burke, but at that moment I also knew that I hated that robot about more than anything else.
The robot looked kind of sad for a second, almost like Chris Burke again, but then he piped up in his stupid robot voice, “Chris Burke-will-return-to-the-Manor-as-soon-as-the-murder-is-solved.”
“When will that happen!” I demanded.
The robot blinked back at me but didn’t answer my question.
Chapter Eight
I don’t remember exactly how it happened that Rosa started combing my hair in the morning, but I’m not complaining. She joins us now on the patio. It feels a little better for there to be four people again, but she doesn’t really fit in. She never wears pants anymore, and yesterday she came to work with a very shiny necklace.
“Where did you get that!” Nurse Kratchet demanded when she came out on the patio to give us our medications.
“That’s none of your goddamn business, Harriet,” Rosa said, causing some confusion until Phillip pointed at Kratchet. Rosa apparently had her own name for everybody. “The hospital ain’t even paying me no more, only Corky is,” she said, and this came as news to everyone except Kratchet, who didn’t seem surprised.
“I don’t know how you can sleep at night,” Kratchet said to her in a really mean voice, one that I hadn’t heard before.
“Fuck you,” said Phillip, surprising us all.
“Why you . . . you!” Kratchet said, and we all laughed. It was the first time we laughed in a long time, and Kratchet stomped off mad.
Chapter Nine
The show is called “Robot Minds” and in it Corky is the sidekick of the brilliant Dr. Baley, who is pretty brilliant at most things except when people are lying to him, he can’t tell at all. Rosa says the word for him is “gullible” so I looked that up and I agree. Dr. Baley is gullible. And that is exactly why he built Daniel Olivaw, a robot who could tell what people were really thinking. The two of them team up when, get this, a nurse, you heard me, a nurse is murdered at the hospital where Dr. Baley works.
The show is on CBS every Thursday night after CSI: Crime Scene Investigations, which we do not watch because they talk too fast. We get kind of proud when we see Corky or Chris Burke or Daniel or whatever he is now, and now we realize that the things he was guessing wrong, those were just his lines. Like I said before, Chris Burke is definitely the smartest one. We all watch it together, three of us on the couch and Phillip up close in his chair. Sometimes Rosa brings in chocolate for Jonno and me, we call it wacky chocolate because it makes us laugh, and it doesn’t make us sick like martinis. Rosa always wears bright red lipstick now and her hair is different. She is saying that Corky is her boyfriend now, and we never see Corky to ask if its true. But somebody is giving her $20 a day, that’s for sure, and it isn’t one of us.
“Boys,” she said one day, because that’s what she called us, “let’s meet out on the patio for a talk.”
We followed her outside and sat at our usual spots at the table. Now that Rosa joined us everyday in her festive-colored dresses, people started looking out the window again. Different people. People who I did not feel sorry for. Rosa sat down at the table between us.
“I have a plan to get Chris Burke back, are you interested?” she said.
We could not have been more interested.
“Do you boys remember he said that he can come home as soon as he solves the murder?”
“Fuck you,” said Phillip, and we all nodded in agreement that we remembered.
“I think I know how we can solve it,” she said.
We were astonished. “How?” I asked.
“Have you boys ever heard of a writer called Shakespeare?” she asked, raising her new eyebrows.
Jonno and Phillip glared at me.
I blinked at her, and nodded a little, like of course I knew. Here’s a little confession (wink, wink), I couldn’t remember actually, but I had heard of him, I think.
“Forget it,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. We’ll bring Chris Burke home by putting on a play,” she said.
“What kind?” Jonno asked. He knows the business.
“We will put on a play that is just like Robot Minds, and we all play a different character. Phillip, you and forgetful here, she pointed at me, will play the twin brothers. I will play the jealous mistress. Then we will figure out who killed the nurse,” she replied.
“How?” I asked.
“Tomorrow is Jonno’s birthday, right Jonno?”
“Yah,” said Jonno.
“And Kratchet will come for you to sign paperwork right, like she does every year, the paperwork you sign to live here.”
“Yah.”
“Now, boys, follow me here,” she said, and lowered her voice. We leaned in. “How does the nurse die in Robot Minds?”
We forgot. Then I remembered. “Arsenic,” I said. “It’s a kind of poison.”
“Yes, arsenic!” she said. Then she removed a little bottle from her blouse and we all leaned forward to see it. There was nothing to see really, it was just a little brown bottle, so we leaned back. But then she said, “this is arsenic,” and stuck out her chin and laughed. Then she put it back in her blouse and stared at us.
“That isn’t real arsenic is it?” I asked.
“Of course not, silly,” Rosa replied. “It’s a just a play, it isn’t real.”
“Okay,” I said. I was kind of confused, so I looked at Phillip, but he didn’t wink or say fuck you or anything. I was lost.
“It’s all about the play,” said Rosa, “The play’s the thing. Okay?”
We nodded.
She continued, “When Harriet, uh, Kratchet, comes in, I will give her a cup of juice. Jonno . . .” she stopped and stared at Jonno till he glanced back up at her for a second, “you have to distract her a little, okay?”
“Yah,” said Jonno. I wasn’t sure that Jonno knew what distract meant, he wasn’t a writer, so I wondered if Jonno really meant yah.
“Then, Arnold,” she said, and she stared directly at me until I glanced up at her, but she didn’t say anything else, she just turned to Phillip. “And Phillip,” and she stared directly at Phillip, until Phillip glanced up at her and then looked away. Having made us all glance at her, she continued, “We will all try to be very sneaky and put some of the fake arsenic in her juice. Do you understand boys?”
We nodded.
“Then what?” I asked.
“Then we will know who poisoned the nurse on Robot Minds!” she exclaimed. “And Chris Burke will finally come home! Okay?”
Me and Jonno looked at each other and smiled. That was exactly what we wanted. We wanted Chris Burke to come back home.
“Fuck you,” said Phillip, and Rosa beamed at him, but Jonno and I weren’t sure that she understood him correctly, because it didn’t sound like a very nice fuck you to us.
Chapter Ten
Jonno’s birthday came fast. Rosa had dressed up all in red that day, and even Jonno was looking in her blouse while she stood in front of him and combed his bangs. Then Rosa gave both me and Phillip a little brown bottle from her blouse. But I noticed she only had two little bottles in there, so what about her? How would we know if maybe it was the jealous mistress that killed the nurse, or the twin brothers played by me and Phillip? How would we know if she didn’t have a bottle? I started to say something but she frowned at me when she saw me looking in her blouse, and I felt too ashamed to say anything.
Phillip was on his second martini when the staff finally brought the cake out. The men were from the kitchen. We hadn’t seem them since Rosa started cooking for us, and they were frowning. They sat the cake right in front of Jonno on the patio table. Phillip and I leaned back from it. The numbers 4 and 7 were on the cake, burning.
Old Nurse Kratchet had appeared out of nowhere, and she was standing next to the table now, holding the big brown envelope with Jonno’s papers. She had what writers call a thin smile. Like it was her duty to smile exactly that much and no more.
Rosa came up to her with a plastic cup of juice. It was red, and the other cups were blue. Now I remember that Rosa kept saying, “remember stupid, the red cup,” to me this morning. Kratchet didn’t seem to notice she had the only red cup, and she took a sip. But there was nothing in there yet because this was just the first part of the play.
Now Jonno was supposed to make a distraction. I wondered if he had understood that, and I wondered even more what he do if he did understand. It would be funny, whatever it was. Everybody was looking at Jonno because they wanted him to blow out the candle so they could get some cake and leave. (By the way, Chris Burke says the staff really don’t care about us, but I think he is wrong, I think they are just very busy.)
Jonno leaned back like to inhale and blow out the candles, but then he just kept going back. Then he was down on the patio floor having a fit. I told you, four-foot tall and bald are not his biggest problems. If Jonno feels a certain way, like scared he says, like when his parents died, sometimes he does this. But Rosa must think he is just being the distraction, because she is grinning and pointing frantically at the red cup, which is now sitting alone on the patio ledge. Kratchet must have put it there before she rushed down onto the floor to help Jonno. Phillip pushes back his chair and makes his way to the red cup. He looks right and then left. Then he pulls out the little brown bottle and empties it. Then he shuffles off while I stand up and I do the same thing, but I don’t look left and right because it’s just a play, and also, now two of us have done it, so we are no closer to solving the murder than we were before Jonno had his fit.
When Jonno finally got back up, pale but otherwise okay, Rosa was waiting with the red cup. “Harriet,” she said, “you were amazing.”
Kratchet, sweating, did not answer, instead she took the cup and guzzled it.
That night was the last night of Robot Mind, and we wish someone had told us that, because then we wouldn’t have needed the play, but nobody knows when the show will end, not even the robot knew that. The other surprise was that it wasn’t either of brothers, the characters that me and Phillip played, that killed the nurse, I bet you’ll never guess who really killed her. Okay, it was the jealous mistress.
Chapter Eleven
The next day was the best day ever. Kratchet didn’t show up at all to serve up our pills on the Patio. An old lady came in with the pills instead.
“Where’s Kratchet?” I asked her.
“Do you mean, Nurse Harriet?” she asked, as she sat the little cups down with here wrinkly old hands.
Phillip nodded.
“Harriet became very sick last night after the birthday,” the old lady said. “Are any of you sick? We are wondering if maybe the food was bad.”
We were fine.
“And your maid Rosemary, she has also called off sick.”
“You mean Chris Burke’s girlfriend Rosa?” I asked. We were confused because we had not had a maid for a very long time.
“I don’t think so,” she said, “this was just a maid that the studio hired to take care of Chris’s extra needs during shooting.”
“No,” I said, “that is definitely not the Rosa we know. She was Chris Burke’s girlfriend, more like a queen than a maid.”
The old woman left. Chris Burke’s girlfriend wasn’t there in the morning either, and to be honest, I wasn’t that sad. I wondered whether Phillip and Jonno would be sad that Rosa didn’t come to comb our hair and bring Phillip martinis, but I could tell that they were of kind of happy too. It was kind of nice, just to have the three of us again. But that wasn’t what made it the best day ever. Maybe you can guess?
Yes! Chris Burke is back! And he’s back for real. Back in the way us writers use that word. Like “back” as in “here,” not like with method actors, where back actually means gone. He’s back on the patio, and Jonno is jumping foot-to-foot, and Chris Burke is here laughing. And this is the real, actual Chris Burke too, not Daniel the Robot, and he talks in his regular Chris Burke voice again too, thank goodness. But Chris Burke says he will have to start talking like a robot again if the show gets “picked-up.” That is a show business term which means that you have to keep method acting, in case you’re not from Hollywood.
Chapter Twelve
We had never seen Chris Burke so mad. He had only been home one day. Phillip and I weren’t even awake when Chris Burke started going crazy. His yelling woke us up. We ran outside, and Jonno was having one of his fits in front of the couch. Chris Burke ran up to us.
“What happened to my fucking money!” he yelled at us.
How would we know? We didn’t know about anything about money, other than the $20 dollar bill that Chris Burke gave to Rosa every day, and he is the one who told us that. How would we know? We didn’t have his money, that’s for sure, or we would get our hair combed.
“Which one of you stole my fucking money!” Chris Burke said again. He was going crazy. He was throwing stuff, like lamps, and Jonno was shaking on the rug. I knew I had to call the nurse, so I ran towards the call button.
Chris Burke ran towards the wall button, too.
I thought I beat him, but he tackled me and I fell to the floor.
Chris Burke was on top of me. “Where is it Arnold!” he growled in my face, “I know you know.”
“I do not know, Chris Burke, I do not!” I yelled back. I had never yelled at Chris Burke before, except when he was a robot, and I was very scared. “Maybe your girlfriend took your money!”
“What girlfriend?” Chris Burke said, and then he stopped wiggling. He was like a balloon that the air just came out of. As soon as I could, I squirmed out from underneath him and pressed the button, and the nurses came.
Chapter Twelve
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jerry said, trying to make them be quiet. “Please, Ladies and gentlemen, please,” he said. The crowd was going crazy. I couldn’t believe it. They were clapping for us. It was so weird. I wondered what they must be thinking. And the people at the Manor are watching too, I knew that. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jerry said again, and now the audience started to get quiet, “we have some very special guests today, including the man who solved the Harriet Ellis murder. He is not the first man to solve a murder, but he is perhaps the first to solve a murder he committed!”
The audience went crazy again. We weren’t sure what Jerry meant by that, but there he was, Jerry Springer, walking down the studio steps towards the three of us, smiling and holding his arms out. We were actually on the Jerry Springer show. It was amazing.
First, Jerry went to Jonno, who was looking down, and I was worrying he might go into a fit, and Jerry said, “So, you’re Jonno right?” Jonno didn’t look up at Jerry. He just sat there, red as a cup. For once, he didn’t look happy or sad, he was just frozen like a block of ice. Backstage Jonno was telling us all the stuff he was going to do when he got onstage, but it turned out he really couldn’t even move he was so scared.
Then Jerry walked over to Phillip who was between us, and said your Phillip right? Phillip looked up at Jerry through his new glasses, and spoke.
“Beeeep!”
Well, that is what you heard. We heard fuck you! but we knew that Phillip meant he was really happy to be there.
Chris Burke could not be there. He was back on the set for season two of Robot Minds, but Chris Burke hates Chicago anyways. It got picked up, that’s a show business term. I love Chris Burke, but I think he might be wrong about Chicago because it is very warm here at The Jerry Springer Show.
So then Jerry walked up to me, little old Arnold Hemingway from the Manor, the first Hemingway to publish a book in a generation. An actual celebrity. Jerry was smaller than I thought he would be. He looked at me and smiled, and said, How are you? Just like I prayed he would.
“Living the dream, Jerry, just living the dream!” I said.
The crowd went wild again. I looked over at Jonno and he was just staring at me. I did it. I was so cool. I think, actually, that one time, I was even a little cooler than Chris Burke.
Chapter Thirteen
Confession, Part 2
I tried to put more confessions in this book, but I couldn’t really think of any. But I did think of one Confession, and I think my Grandpapa would be proud. Here it is.
I didn’t really hate Nurse Kratchet. Other than calling us monkeys, she was actually pretty nice and I guess she was a good nurse too. She didn’t bother us all the time, even though it seemed like she did, and she let Chris Burke have as many martinis as he wanted. Also, back then, we could stay up as late as we wanted, and yell at the tour bus. The new nurse doesn’t let us do any of those things. Kratchet was mean in her own way, but I miss her, and I wish she wasn’t dead.
APPENDIX
Grandpapa said you have to tie your shoes before you walk away. But not too tight, he said, not too tight. I had forgotten some things, but then I read remembered I had written down the questions. Here you go.
Question: Jonno, When your face is like that, do you feel sad or is it just how your face is?
Answer: Yah.
Question: Why does Chris Burke hate judges?
Answer: Everybody hates judges, stupid.
Question: Why does Chris Burke hate people from Chicago?
Answer: Because it’s cold.
Question: Who is your mother, Phillip?
Answer: Fuck you!
And my friend’s name is Jim.
THE END
Hollywood Home’s Tour has arrived at the Manor Assisted Living House for Disabled Adults in West Hollywood. As I’m sure you all know, this was the location of one of the most diabolical murder plots in Hollywood history. It’s so awful, we were surprised Charles Manson wasn’t involved. (Pause for laughter.) I’m sure none of you need to be reminded of the Case of Rosemary West, the murdering maid? Rosemary, or Rosa as the men called her, poisoned Nurse Harriet Ellis, the woman who served as trustee and nurse to the four wealthiest residents. Rosa had plied the men with drugs and alcohol, and was even reported to be giving sexual favors to the men. At the end, she tricked them into poisoning Nurse Ellis in a wild scheme to take control of their estates. In what is perhaps the strangest detective story ever written, one of the men, Arnold Hemingway, yes, Ernest’s grandson, wrote a memoir describing the events that is now on the New York Times Best-seller list. Even Chris Burke, who once played “Corky” on the long-running, hit television show, “Life Goes On,” has found new success playing the mind-reading robot, “Daniel Olivaw,” on the new hit CBS series, “Robot Minds.”