Slow Fade (16 page)

Byron sat back and ordered another beer and then went to the men’s room. On the way back he put a quarter into the pool table and shot down a rack of balls while Walker looked out the window at the parking lot. When Byron finally sat down he drank his beer straight down and ordered another one before he began again.

“So when Yeshe told Clementine to stop taking herself so seriously she took that as a rejection and took off for Sri Lanka. She was always taking off but she always came back. They had a lot of misunderstandings
. . . .
Look, the thing is, right about then they started to get involved. It was very intense. He was Lama Yeshe in those days as well as being married, and it upset a lot of people. Including me, of course. I was jealous and several times tried to leave, but Yeshe refused. He simply kept me there. And he made us all look at each other without mercy. To leave I would have had to give him up as my teacher. Because there were a lot of other things going on as well. Yeshe’s relationship to his wife, Clementine’s spiritual crises, my own breakdown. Not to mention Clementine’s being so disturbed about your father. His rejection drove her into a very extreme place and she was consumed with guilt as well as real boneshaking relief for finally getting rid of him. I don’t want to run him down in some kind of ignorant way, but he did cut her loose like he was limbing a dead branch. To top it all off, she managed to get pregnant. She didn’t know whose child it was, mine or Lama Yeshe’s. There was no question about having it, given the precepts that we were all committed to, and Yeshe decided that she should go off to the mountains with me and we would all three take responsibility for the child and that we would think about it in a positive way. Clementine and I got into a terrible fight. I couldn’t stand Yeshe’s posture of holy omniscience and the way he kept shoving his equanimity in my face, although in retrospect I can see that he was having his own problems with his wife, not to mention the Tibetan community, which was properly scandalized. But I felt betrayed and hurt, and my whole relationship with him as my teacher was in question. I couldn’t see what benefit this soap opera had for any of us. And Clementine had given herself up to a holy mother role and that annoyed and isolated me even more. When I told her she was just another example of shallow mysticism, she went off and left again, going up to the Kulu valley for a three-month retreat.

“Two months later she had a miscarriage. She was very sick, and the local doctor thought she was going to die. She refused to give him anyone’s address, but he found a letter from me and wrote me in Delhi. Yeshe wanted to go, but for various reasons it was impossible, and I went alone. When I got up to the little village she was living in, she wasn’t there. She had left no forwarding address and not even the doctor knew where she had gone, saying only that she had been totally distraught and he was worried about her mind. When I got back to Delhi there was a note from her saying that she was in Benares and that she wasn’t well but she would survive and that Yeshe and I shouldn’t worry. But we were worried, and a few days later when you showed up Yeshe had very strong premonitions that your wife was headed for some kind of disaster and that Clementine had either died or was going to die. So the day after you left I flew to Benares.

“It took a week to find her. She was in Sarnath, an hour outside of Benares. She had gone there on a pilgrimage and was living in a government bungalow near the Deer Park, where Buddha preached his first sermon after attaining enlightenment. She was in one of those small rooms with a string bed, a bare light bulb on the ceiling, and no plumbing. It was clean enough, but it was next to a bus station and there was always a lot of noise. She was lying on the bed when I came in and didn’t know who I was. She had lost about thirty pounds and had chopped off her hair. I sat down on the bed and held her while she went limp in my arms. Finally she recognized me and was able to say my name and whisper that she was glad I had come. You apparently had never made it. I figured that you had seen how hard it would be on the road and had turned back. And then, to tell you the truth, I just forgot about you. It was clear that Clementine was dying. I tried to get her to a hospital or at least to a good hotel in Benares where I could get a doctor, but she refused. I thought of forcing her, but then I gave in because I was afraid that she would just die en route if she didn’t want to go. I fixed up the room as best I could and put in a mattress so that I could sleep beside her. She refused to eat anything but broth and some soft-boiled eggs that I made on a little kerosene heater. She had a few dharma books and I read her passages from the Bardo Thodol and recited prayers and mantras, particularly ‘Om gate gate parasamgate bodhi svaha’— Gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone. I had never witnessed anyone’s death and even though that’s what the trip is supposed to be about, I felt unprepared. Clem was lying there on the bed way out beyond language, staring at me with her huge eyes as she slipped in and out of her body. I bathed her and tried to match my breathing with hers and after a while there was nothing else. I whispered what I could remember of the Bardo instructions, but I couldn’t tell if she heard me or not. At the end of two days and nights she opened her eyes and looked at me, forming ‘Yeshe’ with her lips, and then she turned her head to the wall and died. I had prayers said for her and saw that she was burned properly. I wrote you about her death, care of that address you gave me in Beverly Hills, but obviously it never got to you. And after that I forgot while Yeshe and I set out on our own pilgrimage through Australia, Hong Kong, Chicago, and finally here.”

That was all Byron cared to say. They sat around for a while and shot a game of pool, and then Walker took Byron home.

The next morning Walker drove to Vermont, intending to make a swing through New Hampshire and then down through Massachusetts and Connecticut before arriving in New York.

WHILE
Walker was on his leisurely detour, Wesley and Evelyn were hanging out at the end of the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin in New York, contemplating the sleek and elegant yacht
Eastern Star
. It was a cool Sunday morning and the hint of fall was in the air. They were wearing matching outfits of blue Topsiders, wool-knit turtlenecks, and waterproof canvas pants, and they were both hung over and hesitant about being on the water, even on a structure as obviously well appointed and seaworthy as the
Eastern Star
. They had just about decided to pass and go back to bed when A.D. appeared on deck. He was dressed like a Marlboro ad and he was smoking a huge cigar.

“Ahoy there,” A.D. yelled down at them.

“I’m not going on board if there’s a camera around,” Evelyn said very quickly to Wesley.

“We’ve been getting great stuff,” A.D. went on as if he hadn’t heard Evelyn. “A give-and-take interview with our host, Toulouse, who is my kind of high roller, and now we’re going to establish the two of you coming on board.”

“The camera in its case and the key in my pocket,” demanded Wesley. “Or we’re gone.”

Sidney appeared next to A.D., wearing his safari jacket and cradling a 16mm camera in his arms.

“Wesley, consider the location,” Sidney said patiently. “We have a classic visual with you against the skyline saying what New York means to you, what films you’ve made here, what triumphs and disasters you’ve experienced. That kind of thing. Then we segue inside the boat with you firming the deal with Toulouse or maybe sabotaging the whole thing or who knows what?”

Evelyn reacted to all this by walking down the dock. Immediately Sidney locked the camera in its metal case and threw the key to Wesley. After Wesley had handed the key to Evelyn and she had thrown it in the river, they went on board, following A.D. and Sidney down a mahogany ladder into a spacious, softly lit salon.

The furniture was an odd combination of South Indian, contemporary Swedish, and Ethiopian. Formica tables and foot stools made from zebra and rhinoceros hides stood before low couches covered with silk patterns from the Bhagavad Gita. On the walls Indians and cowboys galloped through nineteenth-century paintings of frontier life in the Far West.

A large man with shiny black hair and a thin mustache rose to meet them. He wore designer jeans and a pink cowboy shirt with pearl buttons, and he looked not so much Indian as Eurasian.

“Fabulous,” he said, shaking Wesley’s hand. “It is a great honor. I know all your films frame by frame.”

“How unsettling, “ Wesley said.

“Not at all. A great satisfaction. But I’m sounding like Sydney Greenstreet. Please, sit down, Mr. Hardin, and your charming wife. Yes? Evelyn, I believe.”

They all sat on a couch and Toulouse pushed a button in an intercom and told the captain to cast off. At the same time a steward presented them with champagne and plates of caviar and smoked salmon, serving as well a party of five Asiatic men and women who occupied a corner on the far side of the room.

“One of my teams,” explained Toulouse. “For reasons of health and temperament, I have been at sea for the past several years and I arrange for my advisers and experts to fly in and visit me at regular intervals. That way I don’t become stale. Perhaps you do the same with your team? I have spent a good deal of time with them these past few days, and I must say I have found them to be candid and illuminating.

“But now I want to speak to you directly about the script, if that is possible? Good. I assume I may call you Wesley in the casual manner of the film community? Wonderful. First, Wesley, let me say again, from the bottom of my heart and soul, that I adore your films. I have an entire collection in my personal archives, as well as a record of everything you’ve said or written in public. So you see I am an aficionado. I love your passion and your fearless appreciation of the banal and ordinary, even your occasional violence, and I would be fascinated to see what your particular vision would do with a subject as vast and different as India. Such a film would be an important cultural and historical bridge. But on reading the script as it now stands, several reservations come to mind. Even though I am obviously an amateur, I can foresee how difficult and taxing such a film would be to make, and I’m not sure that it would be wise to undertake such an expedition, especially given the present state of your health, which your staff has kindly filled me in on. But more to the point, perhaps, is the script itself. Frankly, I find the two central characters dull and uninspiring, and I am unable to relate at all to the girl they are looking for. Clementine, I believe her name is. Also sex and religion are rather complicated subjects in India, and the script is highly offensive in both areas. There would most certainly have to be radical revisions to gain official approval. Your team has suggested adding another girl, to create a sort of theatrical triangle as a way of reducing the emphasis on a spiritual search, and also introducing some much-needed humor. I approve wholeheartedly.”

“I’m always open to discussing change,” Wesley said.

“Your team has assured me of that, and I find it immensely gratifying to find someone that I am in such awe of to be so available and communicative. We would, of course, bring in another writer. I have in mind a chap from Bombay. Very fine on local dialects and Indian customs. Very amusing fellow. Understands the subtleties of East and West. Also in terms of my money situation, having him would be most agreeable. My next point is really my main point. I am committed to pursuing the Indian project without a doubt, that is, of course, if everything can be worked out to our mutual satisfaction. But I am absolutely excited and overwhelmed by your current film, the one you are now shooting. Your team has shown me excerpts and I think it is very fine, very precious stuff.”

“What film?” Wesley asked.

“The one that you’re now shooting. This one. Here and now. You and your wife and son and the final breakup with the studio. Wonderful, wonderful footage. Shocking, really, the way you allow your whole life to be on the line, or not to be on the line. We shall find out which. But it’s wildly amusing as well. We must not abandon that project.”

“I haven’t seen it.”

“With that in mind, we have prepared a little
soupçon
for you of various moments in various places.”

Toulouse pushed a button that turned off the lights and another one that started a projector, a screen unrolling from the ceiling as they watched
. . . .

. . .
a close-up of Wesley standing outside the saloon in Durango, a small spill of light from the window highlighting his chest but leaving his face in shadows. Members of the crew pass, some shaking his hand, others ignoring him
. . . .
The Prop Man, dangerously stoned and looking for trouble, embraces Wesley with both arms. “Say the word, boss, and I’ll sabotage the trucks and get the studio man busted at the border.”
. . .
“None of them matter that much,” Wesley says. “I was losing it anyway. Could you tell?”
. . .
“Well sure. I could tell for some time. This isn’t an old man’s game. Will the girl stay?”
. . .
“Evelyn? For a while. Until I fuck up.”
. . .
“Which you will,” the Prop Man says. “But there are others to take up the slack. What about that old broad in Mexico City?”
. . .
“No more replays,” Wesley says
. . . .
The Prop Man embraces him again and moves on
. . . .
Finally Evelyn appears. “Where the hell have you been?” Wesley asks angrily. “I’ve had to stand here like I’m saying good-bye at my own funeral.”
. . .
“I lost my purse.”
. . .
“Oh, Christ, that’s all we need.”
. . .
“Are you the only one that’s allowed to lose anything?”
. . .
“At this moment, yes.”
. . .
The camera focuses on him as he walks alone down the empty street, past the jail and the bank and the telegraph office
. . . .
Evelyn and Wesley sit at the airport bar, surrounded by the Production Manager, Assistant Director, Leading Man, and Art Director. “What will you do after Mazatlán?” the Production Manager asks Wesley
. . . .
“I don’t know. Write my memoirs. Look for my daughter. God knows where she is but she couldn’t be any more lost than me.”
. . .
“Hell, you’re not lost, Wes,” the Leading Man says, desperately hung over and confused. “You went down with your guns blazing.”
. . .
They drink silently, not knowing what to say. From behind the camera Sidney asks: “Where do you think your daughter is?”
. . .
“My daughter? I don’t know. My son says India, but my son has been known to say one thing and mean another. Maybe we’ll both go over there and take a look. She’s a strange girl. Independent and willful. Like me, I guess. I don’t know about either of my kids, to tell the truth. I suppose they’ll come back to haunt me now.”
. . .
Wesley walks on the beach at Mazatlán, holding a black umbrella to protect him from the sun
. . . .
Sitting in a bar, he looks straight into the camera: “I’m not going to sum up my goddamn life. Absolutely not. And fuck you for asking me.”
. . .
On the beach at night, Evelyn and the Frenchman from Mexico City sit around a fire. They have been swimming and are wrapped in large beach towels
. . .
“Do I love Wesley?” Evelyn asks. “You can’t just stick the camera in my face and ask questions like that.”
. . .
“Why not?” Sidney asks
. . . .
“It is an invasion,” says the Frenchman. “How would you like it if I asked you questions?”
. . .
“I wouldn’t mind.”
. . .
The camera changes hands
. . . .
“What you do is obscene and childish,” the Frenchman says. “How can you defend yourself?
. . .
”

Unable to watch any more, Evelyn rose from the couch and walked out of the salon, Wesley following her.

They stood on the stern deck, the yacht moving slowly down the river toward Battery Park and the open harbor.

Wesley was the first to speak. “If everything I do causes you such pain perhaps we should think about separating.”

“Is that what you want?”

“It’s not what I necessarily want but it seems to be what’s happening.”

A.D. came on deck and stood off by himself, smoking a cigarette and staring down at the ship’s wake.

Wesley spoke again: “Does your silence mean you have decided not to communicate on any level?”

“I’m considering that possibility.”

“It was a mistake for you to come. These meetings never mean anything.”

“It has been a mistake from the beginning,” she said sadly.

“I’m not altogether sure, but I don’t think so,” he said.

Stooping down, she took off her sneakers and handed them to him. It was only when she was almost over the railing that he figured out what she was doing.

In a long dive she cleared the yacht and started swimming for the shore a few hundred yards away.

“Someone stop her,” A.D. yelled.

“It’s okay,” Wesley said calmly. “She swims like a seal.”

A.D. was furious. “If we had a camera we could get that shot. It’s a one-in-a-million shot.”

“It’s a meaningless shot if you don’t know what you’re doing, and if you had a camera she wouldn’t have come.”

“You blew it with Toulouse,” A.D. said. “It was a bad time to split because the next scene was his favorite. You remember the party at the Frenchman’s house in Mazatlán? You listed your favorite films and were vicious about other directors, putting down the whole business. Then that South American critic busted you for not having any dignity.”

A sailor had run down from the bridge and was yelling for the captain but Evelyn had already reached the dock and was climbing up an outside ladder.

Wesley called out to the sailor: “It’s a bet we have on. Don’t worry about it. It was prearranged.”

The sailor went below to report to Toulouse.

“Some woman you have there,” A.D. said. “A real animal. Does this mean it’s quits between you two?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I’ll tell you one thing, she’s a bummer for the project. I’ve never heard that woman put in a good word for you.”

“I suppose not.”

“As one of your partners and all-time fans, I sure hope you can hang in there. With Toulouse, I mean
. . . .
He’ll pick up the tab and give us a location trip to India. That way we can shoot you finding Clementine and reuniting with Walker as well. You know how much this means to Walker. That boy has worked his guts out being on the trail of this story. Right now he’s probably up there in Albany with one of those religious fanatics. There’s nothing he’s not going to do to make a connection with you. I don’t see how we can let him down. I believe in this project, Wesley. This is it for me. I waited my whole life to find this one.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Maybe that’s true,” A.D. said quickly. “Maybe you’re not interested. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still keep it alive. Blow a little smoke up Toulouse’s ass. Sidney and I have put a lot of time on this project. We haven’t been drawing wages either. We’re going for broke. And you might not know it, but life on the street isn’t too colorful these days.”