Recognizing Genius, And Other Things Leonard Nimoy Doesn't Do

Bill has decided that one day, Leonard will finally admit that Bill comes up with some really fucking amazing ideas. That exact phrasing. Bill will write it down for him if he needs to. (The memory tends to go as you get older, and even the great Leonard Nimoy is not immune.)

After forty years, Leonard still remains a skeptic, but Bill’s pretty sure he’ll come up with something that will impress him.

Eventually.

Bill gets an idea while he’s eating breakfast, right as he’s chewing his cereal. His first instinct is to call Leonard up immediately, because otherwise he might forget, and then where would that leave him?

When Leonard picks up the phone, he makes a semi-coherent noise that almost approximates “hello,” which probably means Bill woke him up, and/or he hasn’t had time to put his teeth in. Bill doesn’t mind, though, because you don’t have to be fully awake to appreciate Bill’s genius.

“So for our next commercial together,” Bill says, “I think we should go skydiving.” It’d be great, a real adrenaline rush. Maybe they could even work in a whole plotline about escaping from the clutches of Soviet Russia with their top secret plans for nuclear annihilation. But then again, the Cold War was over. Maybe terrorists would be a better option. Bill could work with terrorists.

He waits a few moments for Leonard to respond. “Bill,” Leonard says, his voice much clearer now; he must have put in his teeth, “it’s 7AM on a Saturday. You’re a great guy and my best friend, but I’m going to hang up now. If you call me again in the next hour, I’m disconnecting my phone.”

And then he hangs up, leaving the dial tone buzzing in Bill’s ear.

But that’s okay, because Bill knows this idea is awesome.

It turns out that the insurance guys are not really all that fond of the idea of throwing two not-very-fit 78-year-old men out of an airplane several thousand feet above the ground, and using stunt doubles is really beyond the point of this entire exercise.

So Bill goes back to the drawing board. It’s not that big a deal. Bill has dozens more of these, just waiting to be used.

“A road trip,” Bill says as he and Leonard have lunch at one of their favorite places. “Just the two of us. New York to LA.”

Leonard takes a sudden interest in staring too hard at his menu, even though he already knows everything on it. “Just so you know,” he says with Spock’s careful over-enunciation (must be preparing for the next one, then), “I am pretending that I don’t know you.”

Bill would probably be more offended by this if Leonard didn’t have one of these weird moments of public shame at least once a month. “It’ll be just like old times,” Bill says. He can imagine it already, the long stretches of highway, the questionable little motels, the gentle rumble of the engines. There’s nothing quite like the open road.

“The old times were crap,” Leonard says, just proving that despite what art critics might say, there really isn’t any beauty in his soul.

“How about a concert tour?” Bill muses as Leonard comes through the front door. Bright lights, musical accompaniment, an adoring crowd. Bill might even dedicate a few songs to Leonard, just for fun. Hamlet Jr., Bill’s favorite Great Dane, sniffs Leonard’s crotch the way he does when Leonard shows up.

“If that’s you want, Bill,” Leonard says, pushing Hamlet away. Leonard’s never been good with big dogs, and he always seems especially suspicious of Bill’s.

Bill’s about to continue explaining his plan for giant projection screens, but he can tell Leonard is not really paying any attention to him. Leonard is, in fact, paying more attention to his cell phone, probably checking for missed calls or text messages from his adoring female fans.

Bill does his best not to fume.

“Bill,” Leonard says the next time Bill calls him up at nine in the morning to tell him about this great new thing called “lolcats” that maybe they should look into, “do you remember the last time I went along with one of your ideas?”

Bill tries to think back, but he can’t quite pinpoint the exact one. “No,” he says.

“It was 1992, and I almost lost a finger to that paper shredder,” Leonard says, sounding a little irritated, and the details start coming back a bit at a time.

“So maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to --”

Leonard cuts him off. Bill can practically see him shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do you remember the time before that?”

“Uh…” Bill says.

“That was in 1988. I had to tell people I fell down my stairs for two weeks.”

The bruise had been pretty huge, about the size of Bill’s palm. Makeup had almost declared war on Bill for having to dump several gallons of concealer onto Leonard’s neck every day in order to cover it up. Bill had felt bad about it for a few minutes, but then Leonard became so insufferable about it, Bill had gotten over it. “But that was completely not--”

“What I’m trying to get at is that (a) your ideas suck, and (b) you don’t have to keep doing this out of a strange belief that you need to impress me,” Leonard says, and Bill winces. The first time Bill met Leonard (or at least, the first time he remembers it, anyway), he’d thought that Leonard was just another tall, skinny Jewish kid, just like all the other ones Bill had known growing up. But as the show went on, Bill had realized that Leonard was actually pretty sharp and talented and good in a way that Bill actually kind of envied. One of the other things he had realized was that it was pretty damn hard to earn Leonard’s respect, and after a while, he’d discovered that Leonard’s respect was something worth having.

“Fine,” Bill says, because he knows that Leonard has no idea what he’s talking about. This time around, Bill’s the one who hangs up early.

The next idea Bill gets, he decides to skip the whole “tell Leonard about it” step, because Leonard apparently needs to see a great idea in action before he can acknowledge its brilliance. Conan agrees to let Bill do his thing on The Tonight Show on the sole condition that Bill has to make sure that Leonard doesn’t try to kill him in his sleep afterwards. (“That man knows where I live,” Conan had said, “and I hear he has a posse these days.” Bill had snorted and said, “The cast of the new Star Trek movie can hardly be considered a posse.”)

It’ll be great, Bill is sure. Leonard will love it. And despite what Conan might say, having the camel in the background really isn’t too much.

After Bill’s hustled backstage by Conan’s impatient AD, he finds Leonard waiting for him in the green room. Performing never fails to give Bill a high, and right now Bill’s still riding the noise of the crowd. He beams at Leonard. “That was amazing, wasn’t it?” Bill says.

Leonard scowls, which makes the wrinkles on his face just look more pronounced. “I can’t believe you just did that,” he says. But that’s just what he says when Bill does anything.

Bill gives Leonard a big hug and nuzzles Leonard’s bony shoulder. The fabric of his shirt is very soft. “Admit it. You thought that was brilliant.”

“Bill,” Leonard says in that overly patient way he gets when he thinks Bill is being an idiot, “your brilliant idea was to read me bad--”

“Hey!” Bill is actually proud of writing that.

“-- love poetry on national television.”

“You’re still here, aren’t you?” Bill says. He presses his lips to Leonard’s collarbone and feels so deliriously happy that not even Leonard criticizing his writing can bring him down. (And besides, it’s totally not his fault that the only thing he could think of that rhymed with “fingers” was “stingers.”)

All of tension in Leonard’s body seems to drain out of it in a second, and Bill can feel Leonard sigh from somewhere deep inside Leonard’s chest. He kisses Bill’s temple and says, “You’re an asshole.”

Bill says, “I love you, too,” and squeezes Leonard a bit tighter.

It’s okay that Leonard hasn’t admitted that this was a really fucking amazing idea yet. Bill’s got it written down. He can make Leonard say it in the morning.

FIN.