a movie...and a Book (8 page)

45.

Jim rapped on the door of the house, then barged in.

Andy sat in the middle of the room in an easy chair. Placed in front of him was a small table with a steering wheel on it.

Andy jerked another turn, then pushed some buttons, and the noise of tires and music faded to a flowing beat. “You were fast. How did you make it that quick?” he said, then turned in his seat, looking at Jim. “Whoa, what happened? You’re soaked.”

Jim walked—almost stumbled—toward the fireplace and sat on a chair.

“You need something dry. Damn, what’s going on outside?” said Andy, getting up.

After a moment he came back into the room and threw some dry clothes toward Jim. “How did you make it that quick, anyway?”

Jim pulled his shirt over his head, still breathing heavily. “If this is a dream, wake me up.” Jim shook his head. “It’s crazy.” He put the wet shirt on the mantel. “Do you remember the old saying ‘Life is a movie and it’s a book’?”

“Of course.”

“As I was running to your house, it was haunting my mind. And I couldn’t get it out,” Jim said, and slipped down his pants.

“Running?”

“Just from the corner. I hitchhiked.”

Andy took the wet pants and the shirt from the mantel and walked out of the room. He came back with a towel.

“I personally never believed there was much wisdom in that saying,” said Jim. “I mean, all I thought it meant was that whenever you’re in trouble, if you keep looking hard enough, you’ll find a way.” Jim put the dry pants on, then took the towel. “But as I was running through the rain, I realized you don’t really need a saying to understand that, do you? That’s basically clear to everyone anyway.”

“True, you don’t need a saying for that,” confirmed Andy.

“I guess the saying can give you energy to
keep trying
to find a way,” said Jim absently while rubbing his hair dry. “But anyway, what I couldn’t get off my mind was the idea that someone was behind all these things in my life. Someone that takes a lot of pleasure in putting me into these very strange situations. What if God and his friends put me into these situations and now they’re having a hell of a time watching how I behave; if I’m strong enough, if I stumble, if I feel awkward, if I say what I think . . . It may be a lot of fun for them, but it’s not for me,” said Jim. “What if the saying were true in the literal meaning? It would totally make sense with my life. It’s scary.” He stopped rubbing his hair and looked at Andy. “What could you do about it then? How could you escape their attention and lead a halfway normal life?” He started to rub his hair again, looking worried and tired.

Andy was looking at Jim and started to smile. “You’re just going through a difficult time, that’s all. And even if it were true, even if someone put us into these situations, it wouldn’t change a thing. You still have control of everything. And do you know why?”

Jim was looking at Andy.

“I’ll tell you why, damn it. You are a writer. You should know it best. You can’t just take
someone
and put them into a loser’s situation—it doesn’t work. Yes, you could do it in a book, but something would seem wrong. It would come off as false. And do you know why? Because a situation has to fit the character. My character, for example, wouldn’t work in a pathetic situation—I’m a fighter. So if there’s someone behind my story, he can use me only in that way,” said Andy. “You yourself write the book. If you want to change the script, change your character. Is that really so hard to see?” He shook his head for a beat. “What happens if you put a guy full of self-pity and a guy that tackles life like a panther into the same situation? Does the story end the same way?”

“No.”

“You’re right. It’s not the same story. You need a weak guy, someone that gives in fast, someone that gets sore about everything, in a loser story. And you need someone that jumps at life with excitement, someone that never gives in, someone with ideas, in a winner story . . . You need a mean guy to be hated, and you need a guy with integrity to be loved.”

Jim was now looking at Andy.

“Those are the rules. In writing—
and life
. I guess they teach this stuff in writing school, or if they don’t, they should.”

Jim kept looking at Andy for a while. “Let’s get the boat and get them back.” Then he said, “We can’t waste time.”

Music starts to play, and we float over the surface of
the ocean.

46.

The water is calm and peaceful, and the sun is shining through some light mist; it must be morning.
With a picture like this on the screen, one just wants
to take a breath of the fresh air.

We approach a raft floating on the surface of the
water.

We cut to Lou and Liz on the handmade raft. Liz
is sitting on the edge, letting her legs dangle into the
water. Lou is sitting against the pole in the middle of
the raft, looking in the opposite direction.

“I was once on vacation, with a friend,” said Liz. “And we ate only ice cream for the entire week. That’s about all. Girls don’t do stuff like that all the time.” She started to stir the water with her legs, looking down.

“Uncle Andy says that’s healthy.”

“Who’s Uncle Andy?”

“My father’s brother. He has these crazy ideas all the time. He lives from his ideas, basically. He sells them,” said Lou. “He also eats only ice cream for a couple of days sometimes. Do you know why?”

Liz had stopped looking down at her circling feet for a moment and was now looking over her shoulder to Lou. “Because he likes it?”

“For one thing, he probably likes it,” said Lou, rubbing the back of his head against the pole. “But he also believes that that way the body starts to appreciate normal food again. He thinks the body can know what healthy food is only if it knows what unhealthy food is. And if you give your body only the most tender treatment, it gets spoiled and takes it for granted. But if you sometimes give it something to cope with—like eating only ice cream for a couple of days, I guess—then it starts to deal with it and begins to appreciate normal food again.”

“It’s possible. We didn’t get sick on the vacation. We didn’t even gain weight,” Liz said, and pushed down on the wood with her arms, observing how her side of the raft sank a little then came up again.

“He also says it’s healthy to get drunk once in a while. Just to give the body something to think about. He always has these opinions. He used to kid my father because he hates cold water. Uncle Andy said no
body
likes cold water, but that you shouldn’t care. Just jump in and look how the bastard reacts—that’s the way he talks,” said Lou, amused. “He says if you treat your body only with great care, it gets lazy. And a lazy body causes you pain all the time, since it knows it can manipulate you that way to keep comfortable.”

“In a way, he’s probably right. It sounds sort of extreme, though,” said Liz. She lifted her feet out of the water, touching them to gauge their temperature. Then she put one foot next to the other and covered them with her hands.

“He says depressed people don’t treat their bodies like that. Depressed people try to keep their bodies comfortable. That’s the whole trouble, Andy says. He has so many opinions, it’s almost like a religion—some crazy religion, though,” Lou said, and turned his head to see what Liz was doing.

She didn’t see him look. She was still warming her feet.

47.

“We’re late. It’s already nine,” said Jim with concern.

They were coming out of the shrubby landscape, a small, sandy beach in front of them. There were two boats lying stranded in the sand. They walked toward them.

“All right,” said Andy, squatting down to the sand.

He drew a circle in the sand. “This is the island we’re on.” Now he drew a long line. “This here is the mainland.” He made two other small circles. “These are the other islands.” He looked at the sketched-out map for a moment. “I guess we’ll find them somewhere in between.” He made a cross on one of the smaller islands. “Here is where they started, so we’ll start there too. You go west, I go east. We scan the whole area. If we can’t find them here we go farther out to the ocean.” He drew an arrow in the sand between the mainland and the islands. “If they tried to come to the mainland, the current probably drifted them west. Without a motor, you can’t make it. So in the worst case we look for them in this area.” He drew another circle. “Let’s say we start now and meet at noon. If we find them, great; if not, we’ll make further plans. Any questions?”

Jim was eyeing the drawings for a moment longer. “What do we tell them if we find them?”

“Hmm? That’s a good question.”

“I guess we can’t tell them the truth?”

“No, hell, no, not the truth. In a way, no one knows what really happened. So why not just tell them that they were missed, so we started looking for them?”

“But they may wonder why we’re searching on our own without help. I mean, it sounds kind of careless not to inform the authorities,” said Jim.

“That’s another point to consider,” mused Andy. “Why not tell them that we found them by accident?”

“You mean, as if we were just speeding over the ocean for our own amusement, and then by chance we found them
?
” said Jim, looking at Andy.

“All right, that’s out of the question. Look, we can solve that problem when the time comes. Right now we shouldn’t waste precious time. We should try to focus on finding them. Let’s say the one who finds them improvises something. I guess we have time to think about that before we spot them.”

They started to pull the boats into the water. Andy started the engine and sped off first.

48.

We are back with Liz and Lou. We see them both on their raft. Lou is lying on his back, and Liz is sitting
against the pole, looking toward him.

“And the crazy thing is, we didn’t even realize it,” said Lou. “But what happened to that guy in the book I told you about happens to everyone one way or another.” He looked at the sky for a moment. “Whatever problems you had as a kid you naturally try to fight. You may think that it’s all a mess once in a while, but step by step you will find a way out, and you learn and grow a lot.” He shook his head slightly. “That’s the beauty of life.” A look of awe crossed his face. “Heck, life always finds a way. You can’t imprison life.”

“Yes, you can,” said Liz, observing Lou’s reaction.

He didn’t move; he just kept looking up at the sky.

“I was once on vacation somewhere, and at the hotel they had this aquarium in the lobby. One day I noticed a little fish in the tank looking at the glass. There were many different fish in the tank, but only one like him. So I got pretty close in front of him and looked back in, to try to get his attention. But he didn’t move. He just looked at the glass. A day later I passed the tank again, and this fish was still in the same spot, looking at the glass. The other fish, which weren’t unique, chased each other all over the place. But he only looked at the glass.” Liz reflected for a moment. “Isn’t that sad?”

“That was just because he was in captivity. In nature he would never have given up looking for someone of his kind. Even if he never managed to find one,” Lou said. “And as long as he was looking, he would never feel blue.”

49.

Jim was already back by the small lagoon, looking toward the water. After a moment he heard some noise, then he spotted Andy closing in on his boat.

Andy came full bore toward the sand, pulling up the engine shortly before hitting the shore. He leaned backward so as not to tumble forward with the impact. The momentum delivered him about five yards inland, right next to Jim.

Finally stopped, he stood and eyed Jim critically, pressing his lips together. “Nothing?”

Jim shook his head. “No.”

“Did you cover your whole area?”

“Twice.”

“Me too.”

“Let’s go out to the ocean, then,” said Jim.

50.

We see the same small lagoon. No one is there. The
sun is now orange and almost touching the water.

After a moment the shapes of two boats appear
against the sunlight. They are closing in on the sand.
This time neither of the boats hits with much enthusiasm. Each figure gets out, and we observe,
by slowly turning our perspective, how they walk
through the sand back to the trail. This time it’s just
a dark spot between the shrubs. They enter the darkness and disappear.

51.

With a cut we float over the surface of the ocean. It
must be just about daybreak of the next morning. A
warm breeze blows over the water, the way it some
times does in the summer before a thunderstorm. The
sky, reflected on the surface, seems gray and cloudy.

We keep floating over the water for a while. After
a minute or two the camera raises up and we see the
cloudy horizon above the sea.

We float a little longer.

All of a sudden we see something on the horizon.
We are way too far away to tell what it really is—it’s
just that we see it’s the shape of
something
.

We float a little closer.

With a cut the screen turns black.

We’re listening to the wind for a while. We also
hear someone breathing.

Eyes open and we see the cloudy sky. On the right
side of the screen we see long brown hair moving in
the morning breeze. It almost looks like Liz’s hair.

From here on, everything happens slowly.

“Do you think they will find us?” It was Liz’s voice we heard. She sounded exhausted.

“I don’t know,” said Lou. He also sounded exhausted.

“It looks like rain,” said Liz.

A long moment of silence.

“I always used to go running when it rained. Always through the forest,” said Lou. “Have you ever gone running in the rain?”

“No.”

“You have to. It’s the best thing you can do. If you run through the woods while it rains, all the colors are so beautiful. Everything shines. Everything is green as hell.”

A small pause.

“In a way, rain is nothing more than Mother Nature bringing water to the trees. And if you run through the woods, right when it’s pouring down, you’re
so
a part of it.”

We see the surface of the water now. After a moment, some drops start to hit.

“I just felt a drop,” said Liz, excited. “I just felt one.”

Lou didn’t say anything.

We see the clouds again, with the hair on the right
side of the screen dancing in the wind.

After a minute or two the hair begins to get
sticky from the rain.

We see the rain hitting the sea again. It rains
harder now.

We keep looking at the rain-hammered surface
for a while.