a movie...and a Book (7 page)

37.

Jim and Arnold walk through the city, going to work.

“How did it turn out with your new book idea?” Arnold asked.

“It got declined,” said Jim. He looks older than the last time we saw him.

“
What?
But you said—”

“I know.”

“But—”

“They changed their minds, that’s all,” said Jim.

Arnold thought about it for a moment, then looked up at Jim. He saw Jim’s tired face and looked at the ground. “What are you going to do now, Mr. Frazier?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” said Jim, pressing his lips together. “What would you do in my position?”

“Me?
Hmm. I don’t know. I’m not a writer. I was never really good at writing essays and stuff.”

“It can be a real advantage, not believing in something.”

“But . . . but you told me—”

“I know. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t know,” Jim said, looking into space. “Maybe I’m just a little confused, though.”

Arnold didn’t know what to say, so he just kept looking at the ground, thinking.

“Do you have a brother, Arnold?”

“No, a sister,” Arnold said, rolling his eyes.

Jim saw it and smiled a little. “My brother told me about a friend of his, who isn’t exactly a psychiatrist, just someone who really understands life and helps other people out. He told me I should go visit him.” Jim stopped and thought for a moment. “Would you think I was crazy if I went to a psychiatrist, Arnold?”

Arnold was looking up at Jim, smiling. “I know you’re not crazy, Mr. Frazier.”

“Thank you, Arnold. You have a good mind. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

Pride crossed Arnold’s face. He seemed to consider it. He moved his head a little from side to side, and his lower lip started to protrude. “No. No one ever told me that, Mr. Frazier,” he said, looking up at Jim with big eyes.

38.

Early evening. We see Jim talking to an elderly person but we can’t hear them. Instead we are listening
to music.

Jim sat on a chair talking to an old man sitting behind a desk. The arrangement of the room indicated that this was the psychiatrist Jim had been talking about. The old man didn’t quite look like a psychiatrist, though. He just looked rather weird.

The old man’s movements were deliberate and full of motivation, and Jim’s . . . well . . . he seemed to have retreated into himself, cursing either his brother’s
great
ideas or his own stupidity in following them.

Judging by the way they moved, it was clear that the old man was full of motivation, . . . and Jim . . .
well
. . . his motivation seemed rather
moderate
.

39.

In another place at the same time.

Pete was sitting with a couple of friends in front of the TV. He checked his watch. “According to my watch, it must be on . . . now.”

Everyone grew silent, staring at the TV.

A big John Deere appears in a deserted landscape. It’s
one of the last great machines—with eight huge tires and a
motor that roars like an explosion—that blows everyone’s
mind. Music with a heavy beat starts to set in. The John
Deere’s engine starts. Smoke is shooting out of the exhaust
pipe.

While the John Deere shifts into gear and starts to roll,
the sound becomes more intense. To see this machine in a
picture is one thing, but to see it in action is pure madness.

Everything is rolling with great momentum now, the
music and the John Deere. The tension is high.

Then the refrain of the song sets in, and the John Deere
lowers the fork into the soil, dragging it with great force
through the landscape. Fog is lifting; everything is power
ful. Total craziness.

After a moment we see the crew that filmed the
commercial, totally excited, jumping around, giving the
thumbs-up and high fives. There are some girls in bikinis.

A sentence appears on the screen: “Farming never gets
boring.”

For a short moment we see the John Deere pulling the
fork a little farther toward the horizon.

Pete and his friends, still glued to the screen, were all hypnotically smiling.

40.

We are back with Jim and the old man behind the
desk.

“Life is a game. It’s a book and it’s a movie, Mr. Frazier,” said the old man presently, starting to nod his head.

Jim gave the old man a suspicious look, seeming surprised that it wasn’t just a family saying.

The old man didn’t notice it, though. He was still nodding his head.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying,” said Jim. “But what if you don’t agree with the narrator anymore?”

“Why don’t you write about it, Mr. Frazier?” said the old man. He had stopped with the annoying nodding, but now he was speaking in a calm, warm, comforting way, as though appealing to an eight-year-old. “It helps a great deal to write things down, to sort it out, Mr. Frazier. Sometimes you find something pretty confusing and you can’t understand it, but then you write everything down and you realize it wasn’t even a problem. You realize you just weren’t looking at it the right way. You don’t even have to be a writer. I give this advice to everyone. I even do it myself.”

Jim rolled his eyes. He seemed to have relaxed a little by now—maybe he even started to see a certain irony in the old man.

“As a matter of fact,” said the old man, raising his eyebrows, “I just told it to the gentleman that was in here before you. He is depressed, and I told him to write about it. I said, ‘Write down everything you can figure out about the problem, while focusing on the positive side.’ ” The old man stopped and smiled at Jim, probably still animated by his train of thought.

“How can you write about depression focusing on the positive side?”

“You can, you can,” the old man said, nodding again, still smiling.

Jim took a deep breath.

“Try to figure out how you felt before. You know, before the unhappiness. Then try to figure out where the excitement about life has gone. Where it is hiding, in other words. What made it leave in the first place? If you really understand these things, you may be able to track it down and get it back, Mr. Frazier.”

Jim was looking at the floor. “The problem is you can’t sell stuff like this. Today you have to write what they want to hear,” he said, looking the old man directly in the eye. “That’s how it is
today
. It’s crazy—but that’s how it is.”

“I didn’t mean to say you should write about it to sell it,” said the old man, smiling kindly toward Jim. “Write it down for
yourself
. You have to express yourself to get to know yourself. If you write down your thoughts, Mr. Frazier, you build something up. It’s almost like a hill from where you have a better perspective. The more you write, the more you climb this hill and the better your perspective gets.” For a moment it was silent. The old man seemed to be thinking. He started to rap the desk with a pen.

“Well, Mr. Frazier,” he started again, “maybe now that I think about it, you
could
write about your life professionally. In my opinion, the best writers did nothing other than pack their own problems into little stories.
That’s
what makes the stories good in the first place.”

“Maybe if you’ve had a really interesting life or an experience, but none of the things that have happened to
me
seem like good stories. They almost look made up,” said Jim.

“Heck, no.
No
. These things are definitely not dreamed up,” said the old man, highly animated. “It’s pure life. It’s pure life,” he mumbled for a moment. “Find a made-up story. They’re always about some boxer having a hell of an uphill battle until he beats the crap out of the bad guy in the final match. Or it’s about some couple getting lost on some small island, first hating each other’s guts, then falling in love.”

Jim started a little and gave the old man a suspicious look again, just a little longer this time.

“Okay, I’ve got to run now. Thanks a lot. I appreciate your advice,” he said, and got up.

41.

Later that evening. It was getting dark, with huge
clouds built up on the horizon. A single pickup truck
was speeding through the deserted landscape.

“They must have left the island. I couldn’t spot them, and the raft is gone,” said Andy into the cell phone, driving his truck. “Maybe they left for the third island. Maybe they thought it was the mainland.”

The truck sped on.

42.

By now it’s dark and raining.

Jim stood at the side of the street. He held a thumb out. A car stopped.

43.

In the living room at the Fraziers’.

Pete was watching TV. Beth came in.

“Hi, Pete. Isn’t Dad home yet?”

“Nope. He called. He won’t be home till late.”

Rain was slashing against the windows of the living room.

“Are you kidding me?” said Beth, looking toward the dark glass. “He doesn’t have to work late at the supermarket.”

“He said it’s something to do with his book deal. I guess he had to leave town. I didn’t ask.”

“In this weather?” said Beth, shaking her head. “He and his books. He needs to realize no one wants to publish his books.”

44.

The wiper was working its way over the windshield,
removing the smashed raindrops.

“I love driving at night. Don’t you?”

The car kept speeding over the wet street, fragments of a yellow line zipping by.

“I’m not too good a driver. Actually, I don’t have a car,” said Jim.

“Isn’t it cozy inside, with the rain pouring down? I wouldn’t want to be out there right now,” said the young woman, looking at the reflection of an oncoming headlight. “But inside here it’s nice, isn’t it?”

The oncoming car zoomed by, splashing water on the left side of their car.

Jim looked over at her.

She wore a white fur hat. Her brown hair came nicely to below her ears.

“Yes, it is,” said Jim. “I’m really glad you picked me up.”

“I pick up hitchhikers a lot. It must be horrible waiting in the cold, dark rain,” she said, and thought for a moment. “Sometimes I feel like being alone, though. Then I don’t pick them up.”

“I take it you drive a lot?”

“Sometimes I drive a lot, sometimes I don’t.”

Jim reflected for a moment, thinking of something to say. He looked around a little, then started to move his hand over the side window, removing the fog.

The young woman looked over at him.

Jim was looking out the window now.

She focused back on the street.

After a moment Jim got bored with looking out the window. He probably couldn’t see anything anyway—it was too dark. He rubbed his hands for a second, tried to look content, and wiggled himself a little into the seat. “It’s really messy out there,” he said conversationally.

The woman didn’t say anything. She was focused on the road.

Jim looked at her, then out the windshield. The wiper cleared his side of the windshield a little, and then it started to get blurry again. Then the wiper came by again.

“Driving in the car reminds me of my father—that’s why I like it,” she said. “He’s dead now.”

A small pause followed.

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“He had cancer,” she said. “Do you know anyone who had cancer?”

“My grandfather, but I didn’t know him.”

“If you lose someone that fast, you start to realize just how much you loved them.”

“I’m sure you do. It must be intense,” said Jim.

“It is. It’s like getting hit with a stone. It shakes you so hard, you lose orientation. I was shattered and sad for a long time,” said the woman, and she thought about it. “But in another way, it’s like waking up.” She started to fiddle around with the defroster. Then she tested with her hand to see if the hot air was reaching the windshield. She seemed to be shaking a little. “Do you want to listen to the radio?” she said, and started to turn the radio on, trying to find a good frequency. She listened a little to the music, then said, “Do you want a cigarette?” fingering one out for herself.

“No, thank you.”

“Ah,” she said, and put her cigarette back into the box.

“But you have one if you feel like it,” said Jim. “I really don’t mind.”

“Thank you, but it’s not that important.”

They drove on in silence for a while. Jim looked out the side window. Now and then they passed a house; otherwise it was just trees and bushes.

“We used to spend
days
in the car, my father and me. We drove back and forth to Mexico. My father came from Mexico.”

“Oh, really?” said Jim.

“We always brought old cars and other old stuff with us. Some things he gave to our relatives—other things he sold. He was quite a handyman. He could fix everything. In Mexico—he even built a house by himself.”

“Is your mother Mexican too? You don’t look Mexican.”

“She’s American. Sometimes she came with us, sometimes she didn’t.”

For a minute or two they drove on in silence.

Jim rubbed his left index finger for a while.

“Do you mind if I turn down the heat a notch?” said the woman.

“No. Not at all. It’s really getting a little hot in here,” said Jim.

“Do you have a family?”

The question caught Jim off guard.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment. “Yes, I do.”

“I guess it isn’t too easy being a father,” said the woman, and smiled a little. “I mean, it must be difficult to understand a daughter sometimes—or a son.” She focused on the windshield wipers for a moment. “But sometimes it’s pretty hard to understand fathers too.”

Jim was looking to the radio display.

“We had this terrific fight when I was sixteen. I left the house and never spoke a word to him again,” said the woman. “Not until he was deadly sick in the hospital. He was one of those guys who go to the doctor only when they can’t stand the pain anymore. The cancer was all over the place by then.”

It became silent again in the car. The only remaining sounds came from the radio, and the beating of the raindrops . . . and the noise of the tires on the wet road.

“We’re almost there—maybe two more miles. Are you familiar with the roads around here?”

“Not really.”

“After you drop me off, just stay on this street for about another mile and it will lead you right back to the highway.”

“Good.” The woman pressed the automatic lighter.

After a while the lighter popped out and she pulled a cigarette out of the box and lit it. She took a couple of drags. “During his last weeks in the hospital we became friends again. But we never
really
talked to each other.”

She took another drag of the cigarette.

“But now there’s so much I have to tell him.”

For a moment she looked at the windshield. It wasn’t clear if she was looking just at the glass or through it.

Jim slid his left hand under his thigh and started to massage the muscle.

“Whenever I drive the car at night, I feel like he’s with me, and like he understood why I did what I did.”

The car kept speeding on, the rain slashing down.

The woman tapped the ash off her cigarette, then took a deep drag. For a moment she seemed to be absorbed by something, then slowly let out the smoke.

“You can drop me off at the next corner,” said Jim. He was trying to focus into the distance.

After a moment he said, “Right there,” pointing toward an open spot on the shoulder of the street.

“Are you sure?” She looked at Jim.

“Yes.”

The car stopped and Jim got out.

He looked back in. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “You saved my day.” He started to close the door, but he stopped. “You’re a great woman. Your father must have known it.” He closed the door and started to walk through the rain.

The car turned and sped away.

Jim started to walk faster. Then he started to run.

Another car came from the opposite direction, casting shadows on his body. The light became brighter. Then the car zoomed by, leaving a wake of spray behind.