Memphis Movie (20 page)

“It's a sex scene,” Dan now said to Ray. He smiled through a mean squint.

“Oh,” Ray Verbely said.

Awkwardly they all gathered on the carpet of the large suite. They sat like Hollywood Indians with a peace pipe, save that peace was coming hard.

“How do you see the scene unfolding?” Suze Everingham asked.

Dan thought.

“It's a smash-up. It's a thunderstorm. It's as sudden as a car wreck.”

“Yes, yes,” Suze said, excitedly.

“Wait,” Ray said.

Everyone stopped. Dan sighed. Here we go, he thought.

“I saw you in
Mitmensch
,” Ray said now to Suze Everingham.

“Yes,” Suze said.

“You were fantastic. I love that movie. I didn't recognize you at first. You've cut your hair.”

“Yes, thank you.”

From there the track was greased.

“Shall we practice?” Suze said with a leer, after a while.

“You guys want me to move on,” Ray said.

“Not necessarily,” Suze Everingham said.

Dan Yumont thought, I love this young actress. I love her so much.

Suze Everingham undressed Ray Verbely gently, like a costumer working on a star. Ray kept looking at the floor until Suze lifted her chin. She kissed her deeply and Ray's eyes widened.

It was only a short time until they were all over each other, a lubricious tangle.

So it was, the next morning, in going over this scene, the one scene on the schedule that day, that Eric seemed to have come late to the party. He couldn't figure out where they were going with the scene, but he liked the energy of it. They were really into it. They were, he thought, real pros.

48.

Afternoon. Rembert Street. The weather has turned slightly warmer. A misty rain falling. The home of poet Camel Jeremy Eros soaks in the steam like sponge cake.

Inside Casa de Camel there is a record player (and here we may still speak of record players) warbling out a wobbly, low-fi CSNY “Déjà Vu.” Camel is seated, cross-legged on the floor, his old man's body still spry enough, just barely.

In his lap he holds a legal pad. He is furiously scribbling away, the lines accumulating like moss on the North Side of the Ancient Tree. They almost flow off the edge of the page and pool on the floor but Camel manages to keep them corralled with a sharp-edged simile here and a lovely aperçu there.

The light in the room is fairy light, refracted through moisture like putting phosphorus in a blender. Camel sways as he writes.

Outside, in Camel's mailbox, there is a letter from New Directions Press. An editor there has come up with the idea of
Collected Poems of Camel Jeremy Eros
, a befitting accolade for one of the last of the hippie writers. But Camel is blissfully unaware of this late-life tribute, this opportunity, which, truthfully, he thought would pass him by as it has so many. What was he but one more forgotten writer? And sympathy for forgotten writers was at low ebb, such were the times we live in.

No, Camel does not know that he is about to be memorialized, honored and collected. Instead he is, for the moment, concerned with how to get one actor to say one line, a line so perfect it is inevitable, like Death, like Forgetting. The line must be said. It's the best thing he's written in many years, this line. Yet, he could not lead his actors—which is how he has come to think of them—up to that crucial and absolute line. He shut his eyes and squinted hard. He remembered an old gift, a facility with language that was close to godhead. Inside his brain a small star was exploding, the light flowing into his pineal gland. This was how it happened, Camel thought. This is how it happens.

Somewhere, out on the edge of thought, somewhere even beyond Neil Young's life-affirming descant, Camel was aware of some small distress. Earth was calling on the Cosmic Cell Phone and Camel, slowly, like a titan emerging from the enveloping sea, raised his head. He could hear moaning from the bedroom.

Slowly, he unfolded his body upward. He stood.

Yes, there was moaning from the bedroom. It was not the moaning of physical love. It was Lorax and she was in misery.

Camel moved to the bedroom door. His bedroom was a dark cave. The windows had been covered years ago with Indian blankets. The walls festooned with memorabilia from a life lived for pleasure, for art, for love. Many photos of Allen hung in the bedroom, from her youthful slim-waisted days of power and beauty, right up until her once-lithe body, wrinkled and greyed, was twisting inward like a question mark, folding up into the final obscurity.

On the bed, profuse with blankets and afghans and scarves and gauzy tie-dye, lay the moaning child, Lorax, holding her little belly as if it contained new life.

“Lorax.” Camel spoke softly.

He moved to the bed and placed a hand on her hip. Lorax was wearing low-slung jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt. It was the most clothing Camel had ever seen on her and he wondered, briefly, where it came from.

“Oh, oh, Camel,” Lorax bombinated.

“What is it, My Sweet?”

“My tummy. My little tummy hurts something awful. Oh, oh, oh.”

“Lemme see, dear. Lie flat. Stop tensing.”

Lorax straightened out. Camel placed a consoling hand on her stomach. Her body relaxed some. Only some.

“Isn't that a little better?”

“Yes, Camel.”

“That will be better.”

“Yes, Camel.”

“Good, good.”

“Oh, and Camel?”

“Yes, Sweet.”

“It really hurts.”

“Hm,” Camel said. “Show me where.”

“Here and here,” she said, placing her own palm on her mid-torso and lower.

“Dear, dear,” Camel said. “What have you eaten today, or yesterday?”

“Mm, mm, mm,” Lorax hummed. “Lots of bananas, Camel. I ate your bowl of bananas. You told me it was ok.”

“Of course it's ok, Sweet. Bananas. Yes. I think maybe, just maybe, you've blocked yourself up but good. Have you had a BM lately?”

“Poop. Oh no, no poop, Camel. Not today. Not yesterday. Um, the day before . . . is that bad, Camel?”

“Not too bad, Sweet. We can fix it, yes?”

“Oh, Camel, can you? Can you make it not hurt, wonderful Camel?”

“Stay with me. This is what I'm thinking. This may startle. Back in the day here's what we did. A cure that came from Abbie, I think. Or Grace. Or—well, no matter. Richard called it the Boo Enema, because he loved ghosts.”

“Your good friend, Richard. Richard the poet.”

“Yes.”

“What, what do I have to do?”

“You have to do little, My Dear. Relax. Trust me. Take your clothes off. How does that sound?”

“Yes, Camel.”

Lorax rose, painfully, purring little
mm
's, and removed her shirt. Camel helped her pull the very tight jeans off her lovely hips and legs.

“Lie on your stomach, sweet, and I'll get us some reefer.”

“Camel, do you always use lay and lie correctly?” she asked, softly.

“I try, Pumpkin.”

“That's beautiful, Camel. You're a beautiful cat.”

“Ok, Pumpkin.”

While he was gone Lorax thought about Camel, his lovely soul, his wisdom, his gentle way of moving through the world. What benevolent gods led her to him, led her here? She thought that she loved him just about more than anyone she had ever met.

Camel came back in, pulling on a toro-sized joint. The sweet smoke filled the dim room. He sat on the bed next to his guest's small, naked body. It seemed especially white against the piled bedclothes. It seemed to glow in the murk.

Camel stroked her back and ass and thighs. While he did so he hummed and toked, hummed and toked. Lorax thought this part
would go on forever and didn't mind if it did. Her stomach still hurt like hell but the ministrations felt heaven-sent.

“Ok,” Camel eked around a mouthful of smoke. “Relax your ass and spread your legs.”

Camel positioned himself behind her and took a great long pull on the doobie. He leaned in close. Between her legs Lorax smelled of forest damp and leaf rot. Camel parted her round cheeks and placed his mouth gently between them. And, even more gently, like a genie's best feat, he released the smoke into Lorax's little anus. And, having released his smoke, he lingered there, pulling the cheeks around his face like a mask. Then he tenderly licked down her deep crack and darted his tongue, once, twice, into her now smoky anus. He rose from her reluctantly.

“Oh my Camel, oh my brilliant Camel,” Lorax sang. Something was happening but she didn't know what. Camel was sitting upright now, stroking her body.

“We can repeat as often as necessary,” Camel said.

“Hm, hm, hm,” Lorax said.

She sat up slowly. She seemed a bit dazed. She materialized like a photo developing.

“Oh, my Camel,” she said, dreamily.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Oh, oh, Camel, something is happening.”

“Relax, sweet.”

“Oh!” Lorax said, suddenly. “OH!”

“Yes, sweet,” Camel said, brushing a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth.

“Here we go,” Lorax sang, and passed an elongated, melodious fart that somewhat resembled the swirling organ in “Like a Rolling Stone.” Or maybe it's “Inna-gadda-da-vida.”

“Better?”

“Much better, oh my precious Camel,” Lorax said, throwing
her arms around him. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Camel said.

“I gotta go real bad,” Lorax said.

“Yes, that's good, My Sweet.”

“Come, Camel, come sit beside me while I poop. Oh, please, come talk to me.”

And he did. He talked to her while the sun departed and the Memphis night crept around their house like the shadowy whisperings of the angels. And he never did go back to his legal pad to find the connections that would lead him to his perfect line. The words were never written, never used, never recalled, until two years later, when
The Collected Poems of Camel Jeremy Eros
was released by New Directions and that line, that one perfect line, was the book's opening epigram.

49.

Meanwhile at the Pyramid.

Work progressed. They put another scene in the can.

Eric knew that soon, very soon, they would have to start shooting on location. He needed to talk to Jimbo, who had been conspicuously absent. He was, supposedly, scouting, scrounging, working on the little things necessary to their shooting outdoors. Eric was well aware of the misty rain falling and was worried that this might queer his schedule. Shooting on a low budget meant—Eric thought but wasn't sure—wrapping everything up in a timely fashion and shooting no matter the difficulties. If he had to film in the rain, would it work?

Sandy came to Eric late in the day. She looked weary, the circles around her eyes were like thumbprints.

“Did you like that? That last bit?”

She rarely seemed insecure about her writing.

“Yes, yes, I did very much. That was new—that line about the orrery.”

Sandy looked nonplussed. That was rare.

“That was your hippie friend.”

“Oh,” Eric said. Should he apologize for singling out the one line she had not written? “Well, the whole thing really worked. It had a snap to it.”

“It was also hot as hell. What was with Suze Everingham? She was like a cat in heat.”

“I know. I don't know. Good chemistry, I guess. Perhaps they have hooked up.”

“Of course they've hooked up,” Sandy said with world-weary cool. “It's fucking Dan Yumont. Literally.”

“Ah,” Eric said. His powers of observation, never too sharp, were called before the court and humiliated.

“Anyway,” Sandy said, waving a dismissive hand. “That's one that's good, I think. One scene.”

Did she mean they were lucky to get one good scene shot? Perhaps Eric was feeling thin-skinned. This was Sandy, he told himself. He knew her.

“Should we consider this mission accomplished today? Give everyone an early reprieve?”

“You're the boss, Baby. Wasn't Hope supposed to shoot today?”

“Fuck,” Eric said. “Yes. Lemme talk to her. I need the A.D.—what's his name?”

“Reuben. Wickring.”

“Right, has he set up the shot?”

“He left.”

“What do you mean, he left?”

“Quit, or was fired. It wasn't clear.”

“Uh—”

“He said, ask Cash McCall.”