The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [11]
Milton Glass didn’t ask Bonehead if he had any special plans for the future. As far as Jupe was concerned, he didn’t need to. Jupe felt he already knew what Bonehead’s immediate plans were. To win that twenty-thousand dollar prize money by any means he could.
The talk show host went on to Footsie and Bloodhound. Footsie was unemployed ‘most of the time’. But Bloodhound turned out to be a pleasant surprise for Milton Glass. He had graduated from high school and was in his first year of college.
“I guess I was lucky,” he said. “My father’s a lawyer. And he never really wanted me to be a child actor, anyway. A client of his, who was a producer at the studio, convinced him to do it. Once my father saw what a grind it was, he was sorry he’d roped me into it.”
Glass asked Bloodhound if having a famous face had made it tough for him in school.
“It did for a while,” Bloodhound remembered. “I used to have those droopy eyes. But when I got to be about fourteen, they stopped drooping so much. And by then people had forgotten about the Wee Rogues anyway.”
It was Jupe’s turn again.
“And what are you doing now?” Milton Glass inquired.
Jupe stared at him blankly. “I’m not doing anything. I’m just sitting here,” he said.
“I mean, what are you doing with your life?”
“Oh,” Jupe said. “Oh, I live in Rocky B—B—Beach.”
“But what do you do there?”
That question seemed to puzzle Jupe. He scratched his head and wriggled in his chair. Then he admitted at last that he sometimes went swimming at the b—b—beach.
“But don’t you go to school?” It seemed nothing could dull the brilliance of Milton Glass’s smile, but there was an unmistakable note of impatience in his voice.
“N—n—not during summer vacation,” Jupe informed him.
Glass gave up on him after that. He did not ask what plans Jupe had for his future.
The first part of the talk show was over, but there were still six minutes to fill.
Glass turned his smile on the cameras.
“Now, I’m going to ask our guests to talk about the past,” he announced. “I’m sure they all have some amusing and interesting stories to tell about the old days when they were the Wee Rogues.”
Once again Peggy led off.
“Most of all, I remember the hairdresser,” she said. “She used to brush my hair so hard it made my head ache.”
Bonehead remembered his paycheck.
“We used to get it on Friday nights,” he recalled. “They paid us in cash in those days. In a brown envelope fastened with a piece of red string.”
“I expect that was a particularly happy time for you, wasn’t it?” Milton Glass prompted him.
“Not for me,” Bonehead contradicted him. “For my old man. It was the only time he ever came to the studio. So he could grab the loot away from me.”
Footsie remembered having to wear big floppy shoes. “They had to stuff them with tissues so they wouldn’t fall off,” he went on. “And they were still so loose they gave me blisters.”
Bloodhound remembered the days he didn’t have to work at the studio. “My father used to take the afternoon off too,” he said, “and we’d go to a ball game or down to the beach. Boy, we were both counting the weeks until my contract ran out.”
Jupe didn’t seem to be able to remember anything at all. “I was just a b—b—baby,” he explained again. He said he had no memory of ever having acted. He had never heard of Baby Fatso until he had seen him on television a few weeks before. “And then someone told me that was m—m—me,” he said.
“That must have been quite a revelation to you,” Glass prompted him with his hollow chuckle.
He had chosen an unfortunate word. Jupe obviously didn’t understand what a revelation was. By the time his host had explained the word to him, there were only three minutes left.
Glass stood up, facing the cameras.
“And now I’ve got a surprise for you all,” he said, beaming. “To thank the Rogues for appearing on this talk show, I’m going to present each and every