Memphis Movie (25 page)

Sue Pine stood back up.

She let her eyes adjust to the dimness. Naked, she walked around the room, went into the bathroom. There she removed her diaphragm and while doing so thought about her new life as a movie star. They had told her that sometime in the coming week she would get her own scene. It was being written now. They were going to make her a star.

After ablutions she reentered the hotel room. She could just make out the chair over which Dan had slung his clothes. She quietly went there and began going through the pockets of Dan's clothing. She took out his wallet, removed a hundred-dollar bill. She fingered his change, his pocketknife, his keys.

Then she found what she was looking for, in the inside pocket of his jacket. She calmly took the gun from there and weighed it in her hand. It was surprisingly smooth; the silver matte metal she found almost soft. She didn't know a gun could be so beautiful. And its barrel was as long as Dan's dick.

She took the Raging Bull and the money and moved them into her purse. After snapping the purse shut and putting it under her own clothing she slid back into the bed. Once there she moved Dan's limbs and torso a bit so she could fit in against it, spoon-style. Her ass felt good against his prick, which stirred a bit, though Dan Yumont did not wake. Dan Yumont continued sleeping the sleep of the just.

And, a few moments later, after taking time to smile and reflect once more, Sue Pine joined him.

62.

Exterior. Riverside. A fructiferous light, lemon, lime, tangerine.

The next few days called for outdoor shoots. Eric relished the sweet fall air, temperatures in the mid-60s. And the crew and cast seemed to soak up the ambience and give it back as inspiration. This was, perhaps, the Memphis Mojo, so-called. Eric, at times, regretted going elsewhere to make his mark, leaving behind a city that some found culturally bereft, a backwater burg that would forever lag behind more sophisticated spots on the American map. But a city that had an electric undercurrent, a vibe, though he hated that word, that resonated musically, artistically. Someday perhaps he would capture it on film, a valentine to the city of his birth. Perhaps someday he would tell the story of Sun, of Stax, of Big Star. Of Elvis, Otis, Rufus, Carla, Jim and Sid. He could do it. Today he felt, he could do it.

The outdoor shoots, though posing problems in logistics and transportation, gave Eric breathing room. It worked literally and metaphorically, the outdoors, the expansiveness of it. The Pyramid was beginning to feel like the tomb it resembled.

Even Sandy, whose veins ran with pure big-city cynicism, seemed to enjoy the Memphis air. And, again, Eric began to wonder where Sandy went when they were not together. Not that it mattered in the big picture, since he had Mimsy to occupy
his heart and body. Eventually, he and Sandy would sever their ties to each other. Perhaps that time was drawing nigh, as Eric began to think about Mimsy in new ways, ways he thought he had buried.

One day, during a break for lunch, he and Sandy sat under a tree with box lunches that had been prepared for them by one of the downtown eateries. Sandy was concerned with this new starlet, what her scene would be like, what they would get from Camel. Not that she was throwing up any roadblocks; this was just the way she worked. She talked it out. And she always had been expert at working on the fly, adapting, taking new ideas in and making them work. This was just one more opportunity for her to tackle a bit of a sticky wicket. She believed in the idiom of empiricism, whereas Eric did not.

“How do you see it, this new scene? I mean, sure Camel can do his thing, his, what to call it, Lewis Carroll thing, but that leaves me to shoehorn it in. If that's not mixing metaphors,” Sandy was saying. She held a catfish po' boy in one hand, gesturing with it as if it were a baton.

“I don't know,” Eric said. He was distracted. Someone had handed him one of the West Coast papers. In it there was a story about the movie, Eric's Memphis movie.

The article was written by Luke Apenail, a critic who had been a burr under Eric's saddle for years. He hadn't liked anything since
After You I Almost Disappeared
. Luke Apenail had made his name in the 1980s with a series of critiques basically bemoaning the state of American filmmaking after the golden age of the 1970s, though, perhaps he was most famous for his essay expounding the theory that
Citizen Kane
was really the work of Everett Sloane. He had called
Spondulicks
“chin dribble.” Eric partly blamed Apenail for the critical tidal wave that ruined him, that sent him back to Memphis.

Now Apenail was expounding on the quagmire, as he called it, in which Eric found himself in Memphis. He likened the shoot to the notorious by-the-seat-of-the-pants hijinks of
Beat the Devil
, without the talent involved. He proclaimed himself a fan of Dan's work, and of Hope's, and wondered in print about this career move for them, working with a has-been in a town whose downtown was “like Dresden after the war.” And he was particularly hard on the rest of the cast, pointing out the B list, as he called it, from which Ike Bana, Suze Everingham and Elena Musick had been plucked. Not to mention the “hometown nobody, Kimberly Rinks [sic] apparently an old girlfriend of the director, who was playing a key romantic role.”

But, the oddest part of the article was the part questioning Eric himself. Apenail wrote that Eric “hadn't made a significant contribution to cinema since he was 30 and, now in Memphis, he was floundering with a script that was being written on the set, doctored by a hippie burnout, and, what's worse, he was seeing visions of the dead, perhaps representing his career, which now seemed moribund beyond reclamation.”

Eric was shocked. Not so much at Luke Apenail's tone or attacks—he had come to expect nothing else from him—but by his knowledge of things that Eric thought were private. Whom was he talking to? Apenail knew way too much about the Memphis shoot, about the confidential plights of the picture. No one knew the extent of Eric's struggles, at least not spiritually. These “visions” were private. They were Eric's secret theomachy.

63.

“What's that, Camel, My Inamorato?”

Camel smiled at the use of the term he had given her. Lorax wanted to call him something besides boyfriend. Or lover.

“New work,” he said.

“Movie work?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were through. And I thought you hated it, this movie.”

“I thought I was through too. Eric called and asked for one more scene. A love scene.”

“Mm.”

“And I don't hate the movie, Cubbybear. If they want to throw those kinds of dollars Camel's way, Camel will give them his choicest words.”

“You're a good man, My Inamorato.”

“Not really, Sweet.”

“You can write a love scene with your eyes closed. Perhaps that would be the best way to write a love scene.”

“Ha. Yes.”

“By love scene do they mean a dirty dirty?”

“I suppose so,” Camel said. “They told me I could wing it. As a matter of fact, they specifically wanted me to wing it, to make it whatever I wanted. They have a new ingénue. This is for her.”

“Oh.”

“Why so interested today?”

“Dunno. Nothing to do.”

“Want to help me write it?”

Lorax's round face lit up like dawn beyond the tomb.

“Can I? Can we do it together?”

“Let's,” Camel said and he couldn't help but smile.

Lorax nestled next to him on the couch. Camel had his legal pad on his lap. He was still in his pajamas, a housecoat loose and open, spread out around him like a cape. Lorax wore only one of Camel's T-shirts.

“How do we start?” she asked, eyes bright.

“Well, we're gonna have a conversation that will lead to a speech. They want a speech for their ingénue.”

“Ok,” Lorax said. “Camel? What's an ingénue?”

“Sorry, their new actress, a young actress looking to make a name for herself. A starlet.”

“Ok.”

“So. Let's say where they are first.”

“The bedroom.”

“Hm. No, not the bedroom. No.” Camel tapped his temple with his pen.

“The bathroom?” Lorax said.

“Better. Better. He's in the bath. She's a visitor in the house, a guest. He's tired, slightly drunk. She's just come from Europe, where she was using a Europass to explore the continent and her own inner geography. She has returned to the States because she discovered in herself something horrific, or at least she finds it horrific, an un-expiated guilt, and she imagines that other people will as well. She imagines that people can see the monster inside her and she has returned to the States and is visiting her college friend, in whose house our hero is bathing
and unwinding after a long day, a day in which he was briefly arrested on a drug charge.”

“Wow. Do we say all that?”

“No. That's just for us to know.”

“Oh.”

“So she enters the bathroom.”

“Gulp.”

“Ha. Ok. The first line is yours.”

“Gulp.”

“Go for it, Sweet. Talk in her voice. There's no wrong response.”

“Um, ok. Um. ‘Sorry,' she says,” Lorax said.

“Come in.”

“I have to pee. Didn't know there was anyone in here.”

“Go ahead. Pee. I'm nothing. I am less than zero. I am ghostly.”

“Wow.”

“Stay in character.”

“Yes. Um. I didn't know anyone else was staying at Angela's.”

“Not staying. Only cleansing myself. Attempting to cleanse my soul through ancient wudu.”

“I can find another toilet.”

“Nonsense, sit.”

“Thanks, I—I guess I drank too much beer.”

“Tell me things. Tell me how high the moon. Tell me how low the sun, how crepuscular the crepuscule. Tell me how you came to rest in this sudatorium.”

“You talk funny. And you're drunk.”

“And you're peeing like a cow pissing on a flat rock.”

“Wow, I am. Ah, yes. That feels good.”

“Nothing like it.”

“Um. I'm Nicolette.”

Camel smiled.

“Hello, Nicolette.”

“How do you know Angela?”

“Days gone by. Nights gone forever.”

“Are you the boyfriend?”

“No. Never that.”

“Who needs it, right?”

“Exactly.”

“You are naked. I am sitting here talking to a naked man. And a naked man with a semi-stiffy.”

“And I am talking to a woman who uses words like
stiffy
. And one who is in no hurry to pull her pants back up.”

“Yes. I mean no. I will now pull them back up.”

“Don't.”

“Oh my.”

“Don't. I mean, I am a lonely man. A man who longs for love and finds only recalcitrance and storm clouds. And you are the last woman. The one of whom the oracles spoke. The one predicted in my life story, back and back. The woman who brought the night, the breeze, succor. A womanly wind-tee.”

“All that?”

“Yes. Take your pants off. Kick them aside.”

“You are bold, sir.”

“Yet you do as I ask. You have lovely legs, legs the knowledge of which could drive a man corybantic.”

“I don't understand but I like your salute.”

“Bathe with me.”

“I want to. Why do I want to?”

“Because there is balm in Gilead. Because a second summer returns to blind the phantom fall of snow.”

“Wow. Here then.”

“You are now naked also. An Atalanta come for my golden apples.”

“How shall I enter?”

“Here. Enter here where dragons await. How shall
I
enter? Spread your legs and shimmy down over me.”

“Camel?”

“Yes, Dear.”

“I want to fuck now.”

“Do you, My Sweet? The writing is going swimmingly. You are inspiration, pure-dee.”

“Camel, I don't want to write anymore. I want you to talk to
me
about golden apples and stuff. I want you to open your pajamas and give me your stiffy.”

“It's not—”

“Shh, Camel. Don't say not. Shh, come here.”

64.

“Dan, they're supposed to be sending over my pages today. They said today. I'm nervous as hell about this. Tell me it's gonna go well,” Sue Pine said as she and Dan were being driven to the Pyramid.

“It's gonna go well.”

“It's only one scene, right?”

“Yes. It's your start. Careers have been launched by one scene.”