Memphis Movie (4 page)

A:
 
Thanks, Donald. I'm happy to be back.

2.

Eric Warberg always kept a copy of
Malone Dies
on his nightstand so that when he died people would say of him, “He died with Beckett on his nightstand.” This speaks of the director's pretension but it also says something about perception, especially as it relates to the makers of movies, an art created of equal parts light and greasepaint and air-castle.

Eric was dazed to find himself back in Memphis, his hometown, the place of his birth, childhood, loss of virginity, young adulthood and tangled love-lines and embarrassments. The first morning he woke up in a strange bed, in a house in Midtown Memphis, rented for him by his ex-roommate Jimbo Cole, he had a Twilight Zone moment.

What am I doing here? he thought.

The light coming in the window was Memphis light, a distillation he could recognize in a flash. The soft buzz in the air was Memphis buzz. The tang in his sinuses was Memphis pollen, a potent blend.

Then he remembered. He had come home to make a movie. Hollywood was far away. It was on another planet, a planet he had once called home and would again. He tried not to picture himself with tail between legs. Instead, he wanted to manufacture a new self: the Returning Hero, come from foreign shores to bless
his little backwater hometown with the tinsel and klieg lights of movie magic. That's the ticket, he thought. A triumphant return.

The space next to him in the bed was empty. It was emptier than a bed recently vacated.

Eric thought perhaps that Sandy had stayed up writing on her laptop and he would find her dozing in the den, head on chest. That was a sweet thought and Eric tried to hang onto it.

He stood up slowly. Time, recently, had been digging inside him with its cheap spoon. There were new aches in lower back and legs. He thought suddenly of his father, a man who was hale and hearty and seemingly indestructible until he dropped dead in his driveway while doing yard work at the age of 57. Eric had just crested 50 so the road ahead seemed suddenly dark to him, a country road. The one his father now walked toward Abraham's bosom.

After peeing and splashing his face with tepid water—Memphis water—he went in search of his lady love.

There was no Sandy in the den, no laptop, no drowsy, tender, stirring scene. The den was particularly empty of Sandy, perhaps even more so than the bed had been. Was this because Sandy was not spending as many nights in the bed as formerly? A silly notion, Eric thought.

In the kitchen he found the coffee, the coffeepot. He began the morning routine, the one he and Sandy had cobbled together over more than 20 years together. The coffee, which they had brought with them from the West Coast, was Organic Shade Grown Mexican, the only
real
coffee, as Sandy liked to say.

Right as he was set to hoist the first cup he heard the key in the front door.

Sandy met him in the foyer. She looked like she had been out all night.

This was because, of course, she had been out all night.

Hair hand-combed. Face made of old paint. Eyes like a college student cramming for a final. And her shirt was misbuttoned.

“Jesus,” Eric said.

“Good morning to you, too,” Sandy said back.

Eric hesitated. He stood on the threshold of a scrap. Did he want to continue? He did not. It was the same fight they had had before but not for a few years. They had both strayed—Christ, it was Hollywood—and both had wept and confessed numerous times. Lately, there had been more amity, more nights together, if not sexually (they still managed to pull it off a few times a month) then
physically
.

“I didn't think you even knew Memphis,” he said after a pause.

“I'm in the bathroom, I can't hear you,” she called out.

“I said, ‘There's coffee,'” he called back.

3.

Eric's ex-roommate, Jimbo Cole, had been hired by the production company to scout locations. Jimbo was a real estate agent in Memphis. It was his phone call that now jangled Eric back to sense and sensibility.

“Jimbo,” Eric said. His voice needed a shave.

“Hey, Buddy,” Jimbo said, a tad too loudly for this early. “What say?”

Jimbo was given to these kinds of rhetorical questions. The problem was that he expected answers to them. If he greeted someone with “How are you?” he waited for the reply and assumed it would have something to do with general health and happiness.

“I say, ‘It's goddamned early.' I say, ‘What am I doing in Memphis?'” Eric said.

“Making a movie!” Jimbo fairly crowed.

“Right.”

“So, I've been up for, let's see, about four hours now and I think I've got some homes for you to look at. Some homes that would serve as, let's see, Faith Davis's, where the big party scene will be shot.”

“Hope.”

“You hope?”

“Hope Davis. Yes, never mind. Great. Great, Jimbo. Lemme get dressed here and—”

“Hope Davis. Goddammit. Sorry, Eric.”

Eric knew he had to make it ok.

“Jimbo, that's wonderful. You're way ahead of the curve. Great job.”

“Goddammit,” Jimbo said again.

“Ok, lemme just get dressed.”

“Ok, Buddy.” Some of the blaze in Jimbo's voice came back.

“Ok.”

“Uh, listen.”

“Yep.”

“Can Aileen tag along?”

Aileen. Jimbo's wife. Jimbo had married Aileen Sour. Eric remembered this now. He hadn't been able to come back for the wedding because he had been filming in Fiji. He thought it was Fiji. And Jimbo had been heartbroken, having promised his wife's family that they would get to meet the director of
After You I Almost Disappeared
.

“Of course,” Eric said.

“Great!”

“Pick me up in—let's say a half hour.”

“Ok. I'll be there. We'll be there.”

Eric hung up.

He could hear Sandy in the shower.

Sandy. What to do?

He waited for the water to stop running but it went on and on. He rapped lightly and then entered the bathroom.

“Jimbo is picking me up in half an hour,” he said through the shower curtain.

“Ok. Have a good day. Call me later and we'll meet up at—where was it?”

“I don't know.”

Eric felt a little dizzy. Maybe it was just the humidity in the bathroom.

“Ok,” Sandy said.

“He wants Aileen to go with us,” Eric said with an ironic lilt.

Silence.

“I say, he wants Aileen to go with us.”

“I have no idea who Aileen is.” Sandy spoke above the water.

“Jimbo's wife.”

Silence.

“I say, Jimbo's wife.”

“Ok.”

Eric stood at the sink. In the mirror above the basin was Eric's father's face. Whiskered and lined. Sandy turned the shower off.

Eric waited. She pulled back the curtain. Sandy's body, never a model's, had grown heavy around the thighs and waist, as if extra modeling clay had been applied, yet it stirred him still. Her tangle of pubic hair, now dripping with water, looked darker and more mysterious. He knew there was grey there.

“Hand me a towel,” she said.

“I—” Eric said.

He handed her one of the thick towels brought in especially by the production company at Sandy's insistence. Sandy, Eric thought, was a bit of a hedonist.

“Guess I'll get dressed,” Eric said.

Sandy smiled at him. It was the sorriest excuse for a smile Eric had ever seen.

4.

Jimbo Cole was driving a rented car. He had chosen a bright red PT Cruiser. Apparently, the movie company had offered a rental and Jimbo had jumped at the chance.

“Morning, Buddy,” he sang out when Eric opened the door.

“Hey, Jimbo.”

“You ready to go? I've found some great homes. I think you're gonna be pleased.”

“Right. Come on in a sec.”

Jimbo swung his head around as if he were standing in the middle of a football field at the biggest bowl game of the year. He let out a low whistle in appreciation.

“I knew this place would suit you,” he said.

Eric didn't correct him. This lavish suburban mid-century modern ranch house felt so artificial to Eric that he couldn't relax in it. The furniture looked like Jungle Room rejects.

“Want some coffee before we head out?”

“Stoked on joe,” Jimbo said. “I told you, I been up for hours.”

“Right.”

“Take a shot of something, though.”

“Uh, yeah, there's a bar, I think.”

“You bet there is,” Jimbo said. He located it quickly and just as quickly he was drinking something on the rocks.

Sandy entered, her hair hanging in sopping curls, a bathroom towel cinched around her that showed her somewhat large thighs to good advantage.

“Hey, Jimbo,” she said with no inflection.

“Hey Sandy, you look great this morning.”

Sandy walked past the men into the kitchen.

“There food in here?” she said over her shoulder.

“I don't know,” Eric answered.

“You bet there is,” Jimbo said. “At least, I told them to stock it good.”

This was not really Jimbo's job but he was trying to become the man-on-the-ground, the Memphis Player you could count on.

Sandy bent to examine the refrigerator's contents. Both men studied her ass, Eric with end-of-the-world melancholy and Jimbo in frank appreciation.

“Great,” Sandy said and walked out of the kitchen, back through the living room and down the hall.

“She's practically macrobiotic,” Eric said.

“See you tonight,” Jimbo called after her.

The men left through the front door.

“What's tonight?” Eric asked as they got into the car.

“Film Commission kickoff party.”

“Fuck,” Eric said.

5.

“Where's Aileen?” Eric asked as Jimbo piloted the car down Poplar Avenue.

“We're picking her up at Kimberly's.”

“Jesus Christ, Jimbo,” Eric said.

Kimberly Winks was an ex-girlfriend of Eric's. She was also an actress and had been given a small part in the film, against Eric's express wishes. She knew someone who knew someone and had wrangled a bit part. Sandy was still writing and rewriting her few lines, trying in her way to undermine the starlet. Eric had been hoping to avoid Kimberly Winks at all costs. Their relationship, which she ended abruptly and without explanation, was still a sore spot in Eric's past, a blur in the colored ink of his heart's map. Because she had walked away from what Eric had thought was a good relationship—lots of laughs, lots of sex—and never said why and refused all communication for years, Eric hated her. He hated her just as hard as his ennui would allow.

“What? I thought it would be great since we're all working together now,” Jimbo said. “Hey, you wanna stop off at Houston's for a beer first?”

“It's 11 a.m.,” Eric said, peevishly.

“Ok,” Jimbo said. He knit his brow for a moment. Then his smile crept back into place like a dog reprimanded who knows he is still the favored pet.

Surprisingly, Kimberly Winks still lived in the same house where she had lived two decades or more earlier when she and Eric had been an item. It was a house willed to her by her parents who were both killed in a car accident on Mendenhall Road within a mile from home. It was not the house she grew up in, she was quick to tell anyone interested; that house, which was burnt to the ground when the family was on vacation, was in a tonier neighborhood in Germantown. Jimbo pulled into the driveway as if he had been coming here for years.

He honked the horn once and turned to look at Eric.

“You wanna go in?” he asked.

“No,” Eric said. What he really wanted was to go back to Hollywood, eat shit and get a job on a no-budget Disney film or TV show remake or Showtime production. He wanted to kick himself in the ass every morning for the rest of his days and die of skin cancer and be memorialized posthumously with an autographed photo hung at Planet Hollywood. For this moment what he wanted was for Kimberly Winks to not walk out that door and back into his life. He wanted her to forever not walk out that door.

Kimberly Winks walked out the door.

She stood in the bright sunshine and put her forearm to her forehead to shade her eyes. “Eric?” she twittered.

She looked great. Eric hated her now more than ever.