Memphis Movie (23 page)

Now, Mimsy was prattling on about some ex-beau who had proven to be a major disappointment. Eric was barely listening, happy just to be near this woman, who was naturally so warm and convivial. He couldn't help but compare her to Sandy. Where Sandy was rough Mimsy was all succor and tenderness. Where Sandy made sex a sport Mimsy flowed like a bubbling stream. It was unfair to Sandy, this evaluation while strolling with Mimsy, but Eric couldn't help it. Mimsy Borogoves opened something in Eric that had been closed. Maybe his calm needed disrupting.

“And that's when I knew to walk, just walk away,” Mimsy was finishing.

“Yes,” Eric said and looked at her with earnest eyes.

Mimsy squinched her face into a quizzical grin. “Were you listening?” she asked.

“Not entirely,” Eric said. “But I love to hear you talk. It comforts me somehow.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How long ago was this?” Eric feigned.

“Never mind,” Mimsy said, but she was smiling. “Listen. Have you ever been to Mud Island?”

“Sure,” Eric laughed. “When I was a young swain.”

“Let's ride over. I love the tram.”

“Sure,” Eric said.

They boarded with a group of tourists who were speaking a language neither Eric nor Mimsy understood. They grinned at each other and shrugged.

“Elvis,” one of them shouted suddenly.

The identifiable word was like a gunshot. Eric opened his eyes wide. The tourist who said Elvis seemed agitated. Others were gripping his arms.

“Elvis,” he said again, this time softer, like a late echo. He was looking toward the island. His eyes seemed sad.

Eric followed his gaze. Someone was standing all alone near where the tram let out on Mud Island. A heavyset man in a long raincoat. It hadn't rained in days and the man seemed out of place somehow, as if he were waiting for someone who would never come. Eric squinted, trying to bring his face into focus.

“Whatever,” Mimsy said, with a laugh.

Eric's attention was turned toward Mimsy.

“He's—” Eric started, and stopped himself. When he looked back toward the island the figure was gone and the tourists had moved away from them and were chatting amiably as if nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing had happened but Eric was rattled now.

“What is it?” Mimsy asked. Her brow wrinkled slightly.

“Nothing,” Eric said. “I thought he—that is, I thought maybe he was seeing something.”

“You ok?” Mimsy asked.

“Yes,” Eric said, putting his arms around her. “I am,” he said.

56.

With the movie people doing other things Camel and Lorax spent many evenings in quiet work, Camel at his new poems and Lorax with her coloring books.

This evening Camel was working on a poem commemorating the day Lorax came into his life. He saw it now as something peculiarly his, something blessed and uncommon. Tentatively the poem was called “Day of the Lorax.” The TV was turned down so that a meaningless burble came from it, something sub-speech.
Gunsmoke
was on.

Camel looked at the wild gesticulations of Ken Curtis, whose emoting bothered Camel the way an Aunt Bee episode on
Andy Griffith
could ruin an otherwise lovely evening. Now, Camel let his eye wander to his roommate, who was on the floor coloring. She lay on her stomach like a child doing her homework. She was wearing only a pair of Camel's boxer shorts. At least he thought they were his. Perhaps they came from someplace else.

Her lovely golden back was something to behold, a bridge out of chaos. He started to add the line “a bridge out of chaos” to his poem but Lorax spoke to look at him and the words crumbled like a tower of sand.

“Doin'?” she asked. Her hair hung over her eyes. Her mouth was a bitten plum.

“Studying you,” Camel said.

Lorax smiled. “Lovely Camel,” she said.

“Lovely Lorax,” Camel returned.

“What are you writing, Camel the Magnificent?”

“Poem,” he answered her seriously. “About Lorax.”

“Aw, Camel,” Lorax said. “When can I see it?”

“When it's done. If it's done right.”

“You can do it right, Camel.”

“Yes, Baby. Sometimes.”

“Camel, am I pretty?”

“Prettier than 20 other girls,” Camel said. “Prettier than an oriole. Prettier than an Olympian deity.”

“Camel,” Lorax said.

“What is it, My Sweet?”

“Come here to me and kiss me on the lips.”

“I'm not sure I can get down there, Sweet. Come up here to me.”

Lorax did. Her warm body nestled into Camel's lap like a dream date. Camel placed his hoary old hand around one of her plump breasts. He could feel her heartbeat in it as if it were a separate life. They kissed for a while.

“You're stirring in your pants, Camel,” Lorax said, blowing a hair out of her mouth.

“I am,” Camel said, gravely.

“Do you want to go back to your poem?”

“It would probably be easier than, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to do the easy thing, Camel?”

“Not tonight,” Camel said. And he pushed his legal pad to the floor. It settled at their feet like a dove. Later, the poem was finished and when Camel saw it he couldn't for the life of him remember penning those closing lines.

57.

The brunette actress from the Lexus commercial was named Sue (Lying Sue) Pine. She arrived in Memphis on an early morning flight, direct from Orlando, Florida. She had just come from shooting a commercial at Disneyworld. Her agent called her and said a movie being shot in Memphis had requested her and she took the first plane out. Barely 48 hours had passed since Dan Yumont had seen her on TV.

Hassle Cooley picked her up at the airport.

“Welcome to Memphis,” Hassle said, once she was settled into the backseat.

“Thank you,” Sue Pine said. “Am I supposed to go straight to the set?”

“That's what I'm told,” Hassle said. He had an uncanny ability to drive his car and watch the backseat simultaneously.

“I don't know this director. What's his name again?” Sue Pine said. She had a cool, studied nonchalance to her speech, the product of good schools mixed with small dollops of dissipation.

“Eric Warberg. He's the real deal.”

“Ah. Well, I hope my part is big enough to warrant this disruption of my life,” Sue Pine said. Inside she was agog that she was about to appear in a real movie. The closest she had come previously was a walk-on in a Tim Burton movie. The day of the
shoot Tim Burton was home sick with a case of food poisoning and, somehow, in the interim the scene was axed. She never even got to meet Burton, whom she idolized.

“There are no small parts,” Hassle said with a grin.

“Right,” Sue Pine said. She was already tired of her driver.

She was hustled onto the set as if without her the movie could not go on. The outside of the Pyramid goggled her. The inside was like a fairy tale. There were sets constructed with such detail that she thought people actually lived in them.

“Hi,” a blonde woman with large hips said, rushing toward her and extending a hand. “You must be Sue Pine. I'm Mr. Warberg's assistant.” Apparently she had no name, Sue thought.

“Yes,” Sue Pine said.

“Welcome to Memphis. Right now, Mr. Warberg is shooting. So, if you would, I'd like you to come with me.”

“Certainly,” Sue said. There were people everywhere, people with many things to do. It was like an insect colony inside the Pyramid. Sue Pine thought that each and every person was more important than her. She also thought that given just one chance on the big screen she could be on her way to stardom. She had been schooled to believe this her entire life. Ambition bubbled in Sue like heady foam.

Sue was led to a dressing room. On the door was the name of an actor who, to Sue, was only a dream personage. Surely, someone as grand, as magisterial as Dan Yumont didn't actually exist in the flesh. Surely, he was created by the movies.
This is a Dan Yumont film
, she thought.

Sue hesitated outside the door.

“Go ahead,” the blonde assistant said. “He's waiting for you.”

Sue opened the door and looked back once, like Lot's wife. She entered a room that was like a set in
2001
. It was so white
she thought she had gone blind. And there was no one inside. Only white furnishings, white walls, and a white rug so thick Sue wanted to sleep on it.

Sue turned back just as an inner door opened and she heard a voice. Or more precisely The Voice.

“Hello,” Dan Yumont said. It was the voice from countless films that Sue esteemed. She stepped backward, a bit unsteady on her pins, and her eyes took in Dan Yumont, just coming out of the john, zipping up his fly.

“Sorry,” he said. “Hello. I'm Dan Yumont.”

“Sue Pine,” she said.

Dan smiled. Then—he squinted. Sue Pine felt her heart drop a good half inch inside her chest.

“Is that your real name?” he asked.

“No,” Sue Pine said. “Stage name. It means
morally lethargic
.”

“Does it?” Dan Yumont said. He was gesturing toward a couch. The couch was as white as a blank screen.

“Does that door lock?” Sue Pine said. She had no idea where that line came from. Her part was being written for her as she lived it.

58.

Dusk. A light drizzle through a Halloween light.

Camel and Lorax were at the Easy Way shopping for dinner. Easy Way was like an old-fashioned vegetable stand housed in a building the size of a gas station.

“Tell me again what you're making for dinner, Camel Dear,” Lorax said. She was sleepy. She was sleepy a lot. Sleep was one thing that Lorax did really well. She was Past Master at Sleeping. She held a PhD in sleeping. She slept the way Jacques Cousteau sailed. She slept the way Marco Polo traveled. She slept the way Jimmy cracked corn. And she slept the way Meryl Streep acted: she put her heart and soul into it.

“Camel's Disambiguation Digestive Salmagundi,” Camel said with a wry grin.

“Camel, can you do just about anything?”

“No, Sweet. Camel's ability to do things is very limited. I write an ok poem. I can sing like Dan Hicks if I've been drinking. And I can make a stew that opens your bowels and your pneuma at the same time.”

“Good, good Camel,” Lorax said. She picked up a pointed gourd. “What's this lovely thing, Camel?”

“Um, a parwal, I think. Also called green potato. A lovely vegetable indeed. But not intended to be part of Camel's stew.”

“Do we need these big garlics?”

“Elephant garlic. Hmp. I was in Oregon once. I think it was Oregon. At an elephant garlic festival. I was with Kesey and he seemed to know everyone that day. That day he was cock of the walk, the sexy cynosure, and it was a pleasure just to walk around with him and witness how people were drawn to him as if he were the lodestone. Ken was a sweet man, a good man with a heart like a boar's. I use the past tense. Is Ken gone? I can't remember. That afternoon at the Elephant Garlic Festival, with Ken tripping and all smiles and pats on the back, was Magic Time, and it wasn't too long before we had female companionship, twins from Idaho, of all things, delicate, mink women. And they led us to their trailer and there they had some of the finest hash I have ever had the good fortune to smoke. And along with this hash they had a freezer full of garlic ice cream. Garlic ice cream. I couldn't make this up. They were there for the festival, see, and for a treat they had made garlic ice cream. High on hash, Kesey and I thought that ice cream was just about the closest thing to ambrosia we humans would ever be vouchsafed. That afternoon, in the trailer of the twins from Idaho, we saw a little of the godhead, just a glimpse, via the unlikely amalgamation of hash and garlic ice cream. What was the question?”

Lorax was standing in the narrow aisle of the Easy Way and there were tears in her eyes, little moist rims like dew on a flower.

“Camel, did you love one of those twins more than you love me?”

Camel considered the question seriously.

“No, Lorax. Now that I think about it, I did not. And the more I think about it the more I think, well, Lorax, I love you just about more than anyone ever in my life.”

Camel paused and watched Lorax's round cheeks dry as if by abracadabra.

“Except for Allen,” Lorax said.

“Yes, except for Allen,” Camel allowed.

“I love you, Camel,” Lorax said.

Camel put his big arms around the diminutive Lorax. They stood there like that for many minutes, as shoppers moved around them as if they were a natural part of the shopping experience at Easy Way.