#Stanley’s like bud you have a fever….

[queenburd]

Is. Is this anything

[tcm]

The Golden Boy, John Garfield By Susan King

Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire was Marlon Brando’s signature role. It made the then 23-year-old Brando an overnight Broadway sensation in 1947, and he electrified movie audiences and earned his first Oscar nomination for the classic 1951 film version. But he wasn’t the first choice to play Blanche’s earthy brother-in-law. Producer Irene Selznick had her eyes on Hollywood star John Garfield, who frequently took time out from movies to return to the Great White Way for limited runs.

In fact, writer John Lahr reported in 2014 that on July 19, 1947, Selznick drew up a contract for the 34-year-old actor, “one of the few sexy Hollywood stars with a proletarian pedigree. The Selznick office leaked the big news to the press. The contract was never signed. On August 18 the deal with Garfield collapsed.”

One of the reasons bandied about was that Garfield turned down the role because the contract would have kept him away from Hollywood for too long. Though Brando is considered the performer who ushered in the more naturalistic style of acting (known as “the Method”) both on stage and in film, truth be told it was Garfield who was the catalyst for Brando, as well as Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, James Dean and Steve McQueen.

Just look at Garfield’s first feature film, FOUR DAUGHTERS (’38). Directed by Michael Curtiz, the cast includes Lane sisters Lola, Rosemary and Priscilla, in addition to Gale Page as the four musically inclined daughters of a widower music professor (Claude Rains). Enter handsome boy-next-door Jeffrey Lynn as a budding composer named Felix who endears himself with all the daughters, especially peppy Ann (Priscilla Lane).

The household is put in an uproar with the arrival of Garfield’s Mickey Borden, the original rebel anti-hero. Unkempt, slovenly and possessing a massive chip on his shoulder, Mickey is an orchestrator who has arrived at the house to work with Felix. You can’t keep your eyes off him especially in this early monologue where he explains his anger to Ann:

“They’ve been at me now nearly a quarter of a century. No let-up. First, they said, ‘Let him do without parents. He’ll get along.’ Then they decided, ‘He doesn’t need education. That’s for sissies.’ Then right at the beginning, they tossed a coin, ‘Heads he’s poor, tail’s he’s rich.’ So, they tossed a coin…with two heads. Then for the finale, they got together on talent. ‘Sure, they said, let him have talent. Not enough to let him do anything on this own, anything good or great Just enough to let him help people. It’s all he deserves.’”

There was a sexuality and eroticism to Garfield’s performance that was 180 degrees different from Lynn’s durable and safe leading man. He was so natural; it was almost like someone found Garfield walking down the street in the Bronx and asked him to star in the movie. “He was the prototypical Depression rebellion youth,” actor Norman Lloyd told me about Garfield for the L.A. Times in 2003. They first met in 1937 and worked together on Garfield’s final film HE RAN ALL THE WAY (’51).

“He combined all of these elements of darkness and rebelliousness with the charm and the poignancy and he became the prototypical actor of that time. He never changed as a person. He remained just as a wonderful guy. He was a man of great charm, a good fellow, very likable.”

There was a lot of Mickey in Garfield, who was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle in 1913 on the Lower East Side of New York to poor Russian immigrants. Julie, as he was called, had a rough and tumble upbringing. His mother died when he was seven. “He hated his father,” his daughter Julie Garfield noted in 2003. “His father was awful to him. He was torn away from his brother.” In fact, Garfield once said that if he hadn’t become an actor, he would have been “Public Enemy No. 1.”

Unlike Mickey, the fates and destiny were looking after him. First, it was educator Angelo Patri, who became a surrogate dad to Julie at P.S. 45, a high school for troubled students. With Patri’s encouragement, he joined the debate team where he discovered he had a gift for acting. That was further nurtured when he received a scholarship to Maria Ouspenskaya’s acting school. He was all of 18 when he made his Broadway debut in 1932 in Lost Boy and became the youngest member of the progressive and influential Group Theatre, appearing in Clifford Odets’ early masterpieces Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing. 

Odets wrote the play Golden Boy for Garfield in 1937, but director Harold Clurman decided to give the lead role of boxer Joe Bonaparte to Luther Adler and cast Garfield in a minor role. His unhappiness with Clurman’s decision pushed Garfield into signing a contract with Warner Bros. And FOUR DAUGHTERS made him an overnight sensation. He earned a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, but lost to Walter Brennan who picked up his second Academy Award in that category for Kentucky (‘38).

The following year, Garfield, Rains, the Lane siblings, Page and Curtiz reunited for DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS, in which the actors played different characters from the prior film. It was probably the best film Garfield made that year. But Warner Brothers put him in a lot of movies that were unworthy of his talent including BLACKWELL’S ISLAND (’39) where he was typecast as a gangster. He made some good movies in 1941, including THE SEA WOLF, which also starred Edward G. Robinson and Ida Lupino and reunited him with Curtiz, and also Anatole Litvak’s atmospheric noir OUT OF THE FOG also with Lupino.

Because he suffered heart damage from scarlet fever, Garfield couldn’t serve during World War II. But he entertained the troops on USO tours and opened the famous Hollywood Canteen with Bette Davis so the troops could be entertained and be served by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Both Davis and Garfield appeared as themselves in the hit 1944 film HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN. Garfield also fought the global conflict on screen, giving one of his strongest and grittiest performances in PRIDE OF THE MARINES (’45), a poignant drama based on the life Al Schmid who was blinded by a grenade during the Battle of Guadalcanal. He returns home to his wife (Eleanor Powell) a bitter, doubting man who has a difficult time trying to deal with his new life.

The year 1946 saw the release of two of Garfield’s most enjoyable films HUMORESQUE and THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. HUMORESQUE was his last film under his Warner Bros. contract. It’s a delicious melodramatic wallow with Garfield playing a poor New York kid who becomes a famous concert violinist. Joan Crawford, coming off her Oscar-winning triumph in Mildred Pierce (’45), plays a wealthy patroness who sets her sights on Garfield. Garfield went to MGM for POSTMAN, which was based on James M. Cain’s best-selling thriller. Garfield turns up the heat with Lana Turner as illicit lovers who brutally murder her husband only to turn on each other when they are caught.

The actor teamed up with Bob Roberts to form an independent production company, Enterprise Productions, and their first feature was the boxing classic BODY AND SOUL (’47), for which he earned his second Oscar nomination as Charley Davis, a boxer who loses his way when he gets involved with an unscrupulous promoter. Not only does he have a strong chemistry with leading lady Lilli Palmer, but also African American actor Canada Lee as Ben, a boxer with brain damage. And Garfield gets to utter one of his greatest lines in BODY AND SOUL: “What are you going to do? Kill me? Everybody dies.”

Though his next Enterprise production wasn’t a hit, FORCE OF EVIL (’48), co-written and directed by Abraham Polonsky, is a terrific film noir with a hard-hitting Garfield as a corrupt attorney trying to save his numbers-racket brother (Thomas Gomez) from his gangster boss. Garfield returned to Warner Bros. and Curtiz in 1950 for THE BREAKING POINT, which was based on Hemingway’s 1937 novel, To Have and Have Not. It’s an outstanding film noir with a superb performance from Garfield as well as from Black actor Juano Hernandez who plays his partner on the fishing boat.

THE BREAKING POINT was Garfield’s penultimate film and was not a hit because The Blacklist was engulfing Hollywood and the actor, despite the fact he wasn’t a Communist. His film career was over in 1951 when he refused to cooperate with HUAC at his hearing. Before his death of a heart attack in 1952 at the age of 39, Garfield did appear in a short-lived Broadway revival of Golden Boy, which also starred Lee J. Cobb, a young Jack Klugman and Joseph Wiseman.

Though she was only 6 ½ when he died, Julie Garfield recalls seeing her father on stage in Golden Boy where he introduced her during the curtain call. “When he smiled at you it was like being in the sun,” she noted. “He was funny and sometimes he would like to dance and kick up his legs. I remember him adoring me. He used to take me to the merry-go-round a lot in New York. He was so strong, so handsome and he loved to kid me. He would give me this mischievous smile. I wish I remembered more about him…”

[paralleljulieverse]

This week marks the 60th anniversary of Julie Andrews’ wedding to first husband, Tony Walton in May 1959. Here in the Parallel Julieverse, we generally avoid discussing Julie’s private life as we believe it is…well…private. However, the vortex of media attention surrounding stars like Julie means that the divide between public and private isn’t always easy to discern, let alone respect. The torrent of studio PR, interviews, magazine profiles, biographies, gossip columns and candid exposes that saturate our celebrity-obsessed media push the personal lives of stars firmly into the public limelight and, by so doing, make off-screen knowledge as integral to a star's image or ‘persona’ as their on-screen roles and public performances (DeCordova 1990; Jerslev and Mortensen 2018). 

Like most stars, Julie is no stranger to celebrity culture’s constitutive demand for “the public performance of private selves” (Dyer: 15). Even in her earliest years as a budding child star, she was subject to a probing media inquiry into her private family life. In her memoirs Julie recalls how, at age 12 after the opening night of Starlight Roof, members of the press, eager for a story about the new “prima donna in pigtails,” followed her home, taking photographs as she played in her bedroom and “bombarding me with questions” (Andrews: 80). 

While this scrutiny of the private lives of stars is a common aspect of celebrity media at large, it assumes a particularly pronounced form in relation to female stars. Christine Geraghty (2000) observes that longstanding cultural associations “between women and the private sphere of relationships and domesticity” motivate a widespread, even obsessive, media concern with female stars’ off-screen domestic lives in a way that isn’t typically the case for their male counterparts (186). "Stories of love affairs, weddings and divorces” are the default register for pop media representations of female stars, Geraghty notes��–a soap opera-like narrative economy that positions female stars as public figures whose cultural legibility, and possibly even value, is tethered to their private roles as wives, mothers, daughters, lovers (ibid).

It is in this context that we can situate Julie’s 1959 wedding to Tony Walton. Dubbed “the show business wedding of the year” (Marlborough and Court: 5), the event was accompanied by an almost frenzied degree of media attention, making headline news in the UK and reported widely via international news-services around the world. It was the culmination of a long gestating "soap opera” that had surrounded the pair’s relationship and been played out in regular instalments across the pages and columns of the Anglo-American celebrity press.

Throughout her all-important Broadway years as Julie made the transition to international stardom in, first, The Boy Friend and, then, My Fair Lady, media commentators were seemingly obsessed with her “off-stage” romantic liaisons. Interviewers routinely quizzed the star about her love life and gossip columnists linked her with a veritable revolving door of suitors, real or otherwise:

“A boy friend? Yes. Julie has one. He’s a twenty-four-year-old Canadian actor she met in England” (Crane, February 1955: 7)

“Julie Andrews, star of The Boy Friend has a new ditto: Dr Stanley Behrman, a young oral surgeon who treats the perils of such belles as Bette Davis and Bobo Rockfeller” (Kilgallen, March 1955: 16)

“The real Boy Friend in pretty Julie Andrews’ life is a TV actor in Toronto. He calls her from there almost every evening” (Kilgallen, April 1955: 30)

“Julie Andrews and Neil McCallum talking marriage” (Sullivan, November 1955: 27C)

By 1956, the young star was already complaining openly that, “People link you and unlink you. They tie you with this person and knot you up with the next one” (Freudenheim, 11-B). 

Here it is worth recalling the extent to which Julie’s star image in this era was invested in one of the most resonant narratives of popular feminine romance and sentimental domesticity: Cinderella. As star of My Fair Lady, a particularly influential iteration of the Cinderella fable –– to say nothing of the whole framing narrative of rags-to-riches, Walton-on-Thames to New York, star-is-born mythology –– Julie emerged in the 1950s as what Maya Cantu (2015) calls “the decade’s Cinderella ideal” (162). And what is Cinderella without a Prince Charming? 

Small surprise, then, that media tongues were set wagging and public hearts fluttering when Tony Walton, Julie’s childhood sweetheart from Walton-on-Thames, came to New York to visit the star during the early run of My Fair Lady in April 1956. Despite Julie’s protestations they were “just friends” (Freudenheim: 11B), the local press quickly cast the pair as leads in a romantic fairy tale: “Julie Andrews, the Fair Lady leading lady, and her betrothed, Tony Walton of London” (Winchell, April 1956: 4). What followed was a two-year saga of “on again-off again” romantic intrigue played out in the gossip pages:

“Julie Andrews and Tony Walton picking the date” (Sullivan, May 1956: 45)

“Julie Andrews, the dazzler of My Fair Lady is delighted by the visit of her best beau, British artist Tony Walton. But she longs for him to find a stage designing job that would keep in the U.S. for a while” (Kilgallen May 1956: 38).

“It’s been denied on this side of the Atlantic, but London’s theatrical set is buzzing with the rumor that Julie Andrews…is secretly married to British Tony Walton” (Kilgallen, November 1956: 14)

“Julie Andrews tells friends she’s fixing up her apartment for two. Could it be that a merger with Tony Walton is closer?” (Walker, February 1957: 39).

“The British newspapers are crowing happily over the fact that, although Julie Andrews has become a big star in the U.S., she isn’t making the mistake of marrying a Yankee. Julie remains true to her British boy-next-door, young Tony Walton” (Kilgallen, April 1957: 16).

“Is there a wedding in the offing for Julie Andrews?…No, said Julie, from New York last night. But her 15-ear-old brother, Donald told me earnestly: ‘She’s going to announce her engagement as soon as she comes home in April’” (Fielding, December 1957: 2)

Widely reported on both sides of the Atlantic –– indeed, it even received international attention as far away as Australia (“She is Broadway’s ‘Fair Lady’”: 3) –– the brewing romantic soap opera reached fever pitch in the lead-up to the much-ballyhooed London opening of My Fair Lady in April 1958. 

No sooner had Julie touched down at London airport than she was grilled by the waiting media scrum about her relationship with Tony. “Julie Andrews…first hour home was spent denying that she will marry as soon as the show opens,” reported the Daily Express, “I have known the boy I want to marry for 12 years, but we shan’t rush to marry yet” (Lambert: 5). The Daily Mirror made the story its front page news with the declarative headline, “I love him! I love him!! I love him!!!”

“Please clear up all those rumours that Tony and I have had a quarrel….All this business about an on-off romance just isn’t true…We have never quarrelled in our lives, and there has been nobody else for either of us since we fell in love two years ago” (Wilcox: 1).

The fact that the pair were childhood sweethearts from the same small Home Counties village –– as cliched a romantic convention as they come –– intensified public interest in their relationship, while at the same time cementing Julie’s popular image at home as “a nice sensible English girl thoroughly unspoiled by fame” (Wiseman: 10; see also, Nathan: 6).

Even Julie herself was not beyond framing her and Tony’s relationship as a somewhat fanciful storybook romance. In her serialised celebrity memoir published in Woman magazine in May 1958 to coincide with her triumphant return to London, the star drew widely from narrative romance tropes and metaphors to describe the “blossoming” of her and Tony’s love. She even ends the memoir with a fairytale climax where, following the grand London opening of My Fair Lady, the couple are depicted waltzing on the floor of the Savoy Hotel like Cinderella and the Prince:

“At midnight, with Mummie, Uncle Charles, and all my darling family about me, I was at the Savoy and, as I danced with Tony, the orchestra started playing the music from My Fair Lady. The floor cleared and Tony and I were left dancing together, dancing, I felt, in a world of all the dreams and ‘One Days’ come true at last” (Andrews 1958: 51).

Thus, when Julie and Tony finally made public their plans to marry, it came like the pre-scripted climax to a very public fairytale romance, the final chapter in the Cinderella narrative through which Julie’s early star image was so throughly cast: 

“Once upon a time there was a spindly-legged, freckle-faced little girl with braces on her teeth named Julie Wells. She lived with her mother and stepfather and brothers and sister in a little house in the country. Of course there was a boy-next-door. The years went by and she grew into a lovely silver-blonde. By this time she was Julie Andrews…She was called ‘the nicest girl in show business.’ And after My Fair Lady she was one of the richest. But like the princesses of fairy tales, riches did not turn her heart from the lad who loved her…Tomorrow they marry in the little village church at Oatlands, Weybridge…They will, undoubtedly, live happily ever after” (Stix: 11).

Sources:

Andrews, Julie. “So Much to Sing About, Part 5.” Woman. 31 May, 1958: 31-35, 48-51.

_____________. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008. 

Cantu, Maya. American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.

Cottrell, John. Julie Andrews: The Story of a Star. London: Arthur Barker, 1968.

Crane, Lionel. “Julie, The Broadway Bombshell.” Daily Mirror. 8 February 1955: 7.

DeCordova, Richard. Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. New York: St Martins Press, 1986. 

“Fair Lady Andrews Plans to Marry.” Evening Sun. 6 May 1958: 3.

Fielding, Henry. “Julie’s No.” Daily Herald. 11 December 1957: 2.

Freudenheim, Milt. “American Success Startles British Star Julie Andrews.” Chicago Daily News. 19 April 1956: 11B.

Geraghty, Christine. “Re-examining Stardom: Questions of texts, bodies and performance.” In Gledhill, Christine and Williams, Linda, eds. Reinventing Film Studies. London: Arnold, 2000.

Jerslev, Anne and Mortensen, Mette. "Celebrity in the Social Media Age: Renegotiating the Public and the Private.” In Elliott, Anthony, ed. Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies. London: Routledge, 2018.

Killgallen, Dorothy. “Broadway Grapevine.” Star-Gazette. 15 March 1955: 16.

Killgallen, Dorothy. “Broadway Grapevine.” Star-Gazette. 7 April 1955: 36.

Killgallen, Dorothy. “Voice of Broadway.” Star-Gazette. 10 May 1956: 38.

Killgallen, Dorothy. “Voice of Broadway.” Star-Gazette. 12 November 1956: 14.

Killgallen, Dorothy. “Voice of Broadway.” Star-Gazette. 12 April 1957: 16.

Lambert, John. “Fair Lady Julie is Home––Marriage? Not Yet.” Daily Express. 7 April 1958: 5.

Lowe, Shirley. “The Boy Friend’s Girl Friend’s Great-Grandmother.” Daily Express. 4 October 1955: 3.

Marlborough, Douglas and Court, Monty. “PictureMail Goes to the Stage Wedding of the Year.” Daily Mail. 11 May 1959: 5.

Nathan, David. “The Last Time I Saw Julie.” Daily Herald. 8 April 1958: 6.

“She is Broadway’s ‘Fair Lady’.” The Sydney Morning Herald. ‘Women’s Section.’ 5 July 1956: 3.

Stix, Harriet. “Rich-Girl Julie Weds Boy Next Door.” Daily Express. 9 May 1959: 11.

Sullivan. Ed. “Little Old New York.” Daily News. 4 November 1955: 27C.

Sullivan. Ed. “Little Old New York.” Daily News. 7 May 1956: 45.

Walker, Danton. “Broadway.” Daily News. 25 February 1957: 39.

Wilcox, Dennis. “I Love Him! Says Julie Andrews” Daily Mirror. 7 April 1958: 1. 

Wilson, Cecil. “Pocket Money Star Stops the Show.” Daily Mail. 24 October 1947: 3.

Winchell, Walter. “On Broadway.” The Post-Star. 26 April 1956: 4.

Winchell, Walter. “Broadway Cinderellas.” Daily Times. 25 June 1956: 4A.

Wiseman, Thomas. “Has Success Spoiled Julie Andrews?” Evening Chronicle. 17 April 1958: 10.

© 2019 Brett Farmer All Rights Reserved

[thelastspeecher]

I accidentally sat down and wrote something in the Werepire Stangie AU, which is honestly just evidence that the hamsters running my brain get inspired about whatever they want and don’t give a shit about what I want to write.  Here it is.  Vampire Stan and his werewolf girlfriend.  And Fiddleford.

              Fiddleford frowned at the selection of candy bars.

              There’s never anything molasses-flavored in gas stations ‘round here.  I should just expect that from now on, so I can stop bein’ disappointed when I don’t find what I’m lookin’ for.  The bell on the door jingled as someone entered.  Fiddleford moved closer to the candy bars so that the person who had just come in could walk past him.  The song playing in the background changed.  Fiddleford allowed himself a small smile.  The reason he came here to fill up his truck was because the owners always had the radio turned to the good country station.

              “…comin’ home to a place he’d never been before.”  Fiddleford glanced at the person who had walked by him earlier. She was mumbling along to the song currently playing over the radio.

              She’s got good taste. Fiddleford looked back at the candy bars.  His heart did an abrupt somersault.  He whipped his head around to stare at the young woman.  No.  It can’t be.  She was wearing clothes that he would never have pictured her in – ripped jeans, a loose-fitting T-shirt, grimy red hoodie, and clunky boots – and her hair was long enough now to tie back in a messy ponytail.  But he’d recognize her anywhere.

              “Angie?” Fiddleford croaked.  Angie looked up at him.

              “Yes?” she asked.  Fiddleford stared.  Angie frowned.  “Hang on, how do you know my name?”

              “I- Angie, it’s me.”  Fiddleford approached her cautiously.  Angie grabbed a bag of beef jerky, like she was preparing to use it in self-defense. “Fiddleford.”

              “I- I’m sorry, but I don’t know you,” Angie said.  She held the bag of beef jerky to her chest.  “Please, don’t-”

              “It’s me, Fiddleford.  Yer big brother,” Fiddleford said.  Angie watched him anxiously.  Something flickered in her eyes.  Not full recognition, but maybe a hint of familiarity.  “You’ve been missin’ fer six months.  What- what are you doin’ here?”

              “Gettin’ food.”

              “But- where did ya go?”

              “Please, leave me alone,” Angie said, her voice quivering.  “I mean it, I don’t know who you are.”  Desperate, Fiddleford took a hold of her shoulders.

              “Banjolina, you have to believe me.  I’m yer brother!  We’ve been lookin’ fer ya fer months!”  Angie’s eyes were wide with fear.  “Come back with me, to my house.  We’ll get ya a shower and change of clothes.  You can call Ma ‘n Pa, let ‘em know yer safe.”  Angie trembled.

              “Please, let me go,” she whispered.  The door to the gas station opened again.

              “Ang, what’s the hold-up?” a voice called.  “Hey!”  A freezing cold hand grabbed Fiddleford by the shoulder and pulled him away from Angie. “Leave my girl alone, bud.”  Fiddleford looked up at his attacker.  He gaped.

              “Stanford?”  The man let go of him like he was a red-hot poker.  “No.  Not Stanford. His brother.”  The man’s already pale skin grew paler.  “Yer Stanley, right?” Fiddleford said.  Stanley chewed his lip.  His teeth seemed sharper than average.

              “Who’s askin’?” he finally said.

              “The name’s Fiddleford McGucket.  I- I work with Stanford, on his research.”

              “McGucket.”  Stanley looked over at Angie, who was still clutching her bag of beef jerky desperately. “Shit.”

              “He says- he says he’s my brother,” Angie stammered.  Stanley ran a hand through his hair.

              “You two look a lot alike.  I think- well, what do you think, Ang?  You’re good at sniffing out liars.”

              Since when?  Angie’s as gullible as the day is long.  Fiddleford swallowed nervously.  Oh, no. Stanford said his twin was in with some bad folks.  Is Stanley the reason Angie went missin’?  Angie straightened her back.  She looked directly at Fiddleford.

              “Say it again,” she instructed.

              “I’m your brother,” Fiddleford said dutifully.  Angie’s eyes widened.

              “He’s tellin’ the truth.”

              “Dammit.”  Stanley looked away.  “Great. Just great.”

              “Do you really not remember me?” Fiddleford asked Angie.  She shook her head.

              “She’s got amnesia,” Stanley grunted.  “She’s had it since I picked her up in Missouri.  When I met her, all she remembered was her name.” Fiddleford’s heart plummeted to his feet.

              “Amnesia?”

              “Yes,” Angie said softly.

              “Oh, Lord.  Angie, that’s-”

              “We should get going,” Stanley interrupted.  “Before Stanford shows up, too.”  Angie didn’t move.  “Ang?”

              “He’s my brother,” Angie said.  She met Stanley’s eyes.  “I don’t want to leave without answers.”  Stanley scowled.

              “Ford and I didn’t part on good terms.”

              “He’s not home right now,” Fiddleford interjected.  “He’s- he’s out of town fer the day.”  Angie gestured at Fiddleford.

              “See?  Ya won’t run into yer brother.  But I ran into mine, and I- I don’t remember him, but he- Stanley, I want to know more about myself.”  Her plea was successful.  Stanley’s hard gaze softened the slightest bit.

              “Okay,” he conceded.  Angie beamed. Fiddleford’s heart melted at her megawatt smile.  Judging by the expression on Stanley’s face, he felt the same way.  A small grin teased the corners of Stanley’s mouth. “I could use a shower, anyways.”

              “I didn’t-” Fiddleford started.

              “Stock up on my favorite type of shampoo?  Don’t worry.  I’ll use whatever crap Ford’s got.”  Stan jerked a thumb in the direction of the door.  “I’ll take Angie, and we’ll follow you to you and Ford’s place.  Sound good?”  Fiddleford nodded.  “Let’s get going, Fiddlesticks.”

              “It’s Fiddleford.”

              “Same difference,” Stanley said with a shrug.  He strolled out of the gas station.  Angie rushed after him, sending a small smile at Fiddleford as she passed. Fiddleford blinked.

              She didn’t pay for that beef jerky.

----- 

              Fiddleford parked his truck.  He took a deep breath.

              Okay, Fiddleford.  Don’t expect much.  She doesn’t remember anything. He frowned. Unless she’s fakin’ it to keep Stanley from hurtin’ her.  Just ‘cause he claims everything is consensual don’t mean it is.  He could’ve kidnapped Angie and come up with the amnesia stuff to keep the police off his back.

              “This isn’t helpful,” Fiddleford muttered to himself.  “Just focus on gettin’ Angie a shower, some clean clothes, and a proper meal.  Go from there.”  Resolute, he opened the door and got out.  He was immediately tackled.

              “Fidds!”  Angie wrapped her thin, warm arms around him.  She gave off more body heat than he remembered; she was like a hot water bottle. “Fidds, I- I ‘member!”

              “You do?” Fiddleford asked.  Angie nodded. She broke off the hug.  Excitement sparkled in her blue eyes.

              “Yes!  It started comin’ back to me in the car,” she enthused.  “I guess I just needed someone to remind me.”  Tears sprang to Fiddleford’s eyes.

              “Oh, Banjey, I missed ya so much.”  He enveloped her in a hug.  “We were so worried when ya just up and vanished.”

              “I- I s’ppose ya would be.  How’s everyone?”

              “Doin’ fine.  But they’ll be doin’ a lot better once we let ‘em know yer safe and sound.”

              “You can thank Stan fer that.”  Angie wriggled out of Fiddleford’s embrace.  She looked over at Stanley.  “He took care of me when I didn’t know anything ‘bout myself aside from my name.”  Stanley – Stan – nodded silently at Fiddleford.  He was leaning against his car, clearly uncomfortable.

              “He didn’t take advantage of ya?” Fiddleford whispered.  Angie shook her head.  “Are ya sure?”

              “Yes.”

              “Okay.”  Fiddleford nodded at Stan.  “Thank you fer takin’ care of my sister.”  Stan shrugged.

              “No big deal.  Can’t really turn away an amnesiac, especially one as cute as her.”

              “Cute?” Fiddleford muttered.  He grimaced, remembering how Stan had referred to Angie as his girl.  “Oh, no.  Angie, are ya in a relationship with him?”

              “I go missin’ fer six months and that’s one of the first questions ya ask me?” Angie said.  She crossed her arms.  “That shouldn’t be yer top priority, Fidds.”

              “Yer right.  Yer right.” Fiddleford ran a hand through his hair. “Well, let’s head on in.”  Angie nodded.  She followed Fiddleford up the steps to the house and inside.  Stan, however, hovered by the threshold anxiously. Fiddleford frowned at him.  “Come in, Stan.  Yer allowed.”  Relief broke across Stan’s face.  He stepped inside.  “Yer an odd duck.”

              “It’s called being polite, Fiddlesticks.”

              “Sure.  And refusin’ to call me by my proper name is polite?”

              “When your real name is ‘Fiddleford’?” Stan shot back.  “Yeah, it’s polite to call you somethin’ else.”

              “Stan, please don’t aggravate him,” Angie said.  Stan sighed.  He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

              “Fine,” he muttered.  Standing between the two of them, Fiddleford felt caught in the middle of a temperature war. Angie was radiating enough heat that she seemed borderline feverish, while Stan was so cold that heat seemed to vanish near him.

              What in the world is goin’ on? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think there was somethin’ supernatural about ‘em.  Fiddleford looked at Angie.  She smiled sweetly.  No.  That’s foolish.  She does seem really warm, though.  Fiddleford put the back of his hand against Angie’s forehead.

              “Hey, what’s that for?” Angie asked.

              “Just worried ya might have a fever, is all.  After all, I can feel how warm you are from here.”

              “I’m fine, Fidds,” Angie said reassuringly.  Her stomach rumbled.  “Aside from bein’ hungry.”

              “Hungry like the wolf,” Stan deadpanned.  Angie shot him a warning look.  He grinned toothily in response.

              “I’ll whip somethin’ up fer ya, then,” Fiddleford said.  He tried to shake off the nagging feeling that something was wrong.  “We’ve got some leftovers from last night.  Sausage and potatoes sound good?”

              “Perfect,” Angie chirped.

              “How ‘bout you, Stan?  All right with sausage and potatoes?”

              “Nah, I’m fine,” Stan said.  “I had somethin’ earlier.  Should keep me happy for a while.”

              “Okay.”  Fiddleford smiled at Angie.  “Come on into the kitchen.  We can have a chat while the food is cookin’.”  He winked. “Guess that stolen beef jerky didn’t fill ya up.”  Angie deflated slightly.

              “You saw.”

              “Yeah.”  Fiddleford ruffled Angie’s hair.  “But it’s better ‘n the last time I broke the law, so I’ll let it slide.”

              “Wait, you broke the law?” Angie asked.

              “Yep.  I don’t know if ya heard much news while ya were…wherever ya are, but it was in the papers. One of my robots destroyed downtown.”

              “Fidds!” Angie said, shocked.  She let out a bark of laughter.  “I s’ppose it could’ve been worse, though, with how yer robots are.”

              “Yeah.”  The feeling came back.  Something wasn’t quite right.  Fiddleford forced his smile, trying to ignore it.  “It could’ve been worse.”