by jeff sawyer

Roy awoke on the last day of his life squinting, his face framed by a skinny rectangle of dawn sunlight that had snuck in between the window casing and curtain to stalk him. In the dream, he was in the spotlight on the main stage at the Overture Center, doing an encore with somebody else famous. Jim Carrey, Jeremy Irons, George Clooney – he couldn’t remember. But they were a team.

It was a rare thing, this 70-degree November day in the upper midwest. Even the goth kids were walking to school smiling. But everywhere he could go today, Roy thought lying there, everywhere he had ever gone since that first hit movie in the 80’s, he would be recognized. Pointed at. The cuffs of his favorite moleskin sport coat were worn shiny where strangers touched him. Every day of his adult life, every supermarket stop, every fill-up, every restaurant table, he would be approached. Hit up for autographs by people without pens.

Department of Motor Vehicles lines were the worst. Purgatory. There was no eluding strangers there. Roy’s famous countenance was not easily disguised by the usual movie star disguise, the baseball cap and sunglasses. He wasn’t a cap guy – they pinched his fat forehead, giving him headaches – and he couldn’t see two feet with dark lenses. The lines in the sprawling Los Angeles DMV filed back and forth in interminable parallels, an M.C. Escher painting of a death march. Every time his driver’s license was up for renewal he was sentenced to spend a morning of his life there, staring down at yellow plastic ropes draped between dirty chrome stanchions while everyone else stared at him. The first time a fan passed him in the other direction one line over, she would steal a glance, smile, but say nothing. By the time they passed each other again, she’d remembered the name of a film, worked up the nerve to reach over the rope to get his attention and blurt out some manufactured compliment. By the third pass she was e-mailing his picture to disbelieving friends.

So Roy worked at home, leaving the house only at twilight. Cluttering the bedside table were an unemptied ashtray, an old lamp, the just-emptied prescription bottle and his journal. He picked up the journal, drew his knees up in bed to write against and began his obituary:

“Roy Nicholson, 58, died on November 7 at his home in Chicago. Nicholson was born in 1951, graduated from New York University, and spent his career in various Chicago advertising agencies, where he illustrated logos for many well-known companies and brands. Nicholson leaves behind one relative, in Beverly Hills, California: his identical twin brother, three-time Oscar-winner Jack.“

© 2009 Jeff Sawyer