Golden Hour (34 page)

“Fuck, yes. I've had one screenplay made, which tanked, by the way, and no surprise to me because the director rewrote all the key scenes with his own unique brand of corpse-speak. And I've had, Jesus, I don't know how many not made. You could line the walls of a crematorium with the pages of my unmade scripts.”

“But they still hired you for this.”

“Yeah, I know. It's loony tunes. But that's how they think. It's almost touching, really, the way hope springs eternal in the studio breast. This writer hasn't quite got us there, but
the next writer'll crack it
. Or the next. No amount of evidence to the contrary can convince them otherwise. It's
new
, see? What's new is
better
. That's America. I told them when I read your drafts, I said, Stay with this guy. He's got the voice you need. Just get him to goose it up a little.”

Alan doesn't believe this, but he appreciates the courtesy.

“I don't know that I'm up to goosing,” he says. “I expect they're better off with you. This isn't really my scene.”

“But you still show up for the races.”

“For the money.”

“Precisamento. It's just a job. Never forget that, my friend. It's like going down a mine. You do your day's work and you take your day's pay and you go home and take a shower and pour yourself a drink and you let it all float away. It's just a fucking job.”

“I guess it is,” says Alan.

“I've done what I can to keep your best stuff in there. Not that they'll ever know. Me and Colin work it together. I slip him some of the original pages and he asks for this speech or that speech to go back in. Colin is extremely smart.”

Somehow including the star actor makes it all believable. He wouldn't make that up, would he?

“I suppose I should thank you,” says Alan. “You'll just have to give me a moment to swallow a few preconceptions.”

“What did you think? That I was part of the demolition crew? I'm a
writer
, Alan. I'm on your side. All writers get fucked over. But we know good stuff when we see it.”

“I suppose I assumed you'd want to take over. Make it your own.”

“When the project's rolling? No way. All I can do is stop them screwing it up. Then maybe the movie comes out halfway decent and does some business. Which is good for me and good for you.”

“Yes. I suppose it would be.”

Harlan leans forward and taps Alan on the knee, smiling.

“You look like you just walked in on your parents having sex.”

“I am having to make some adjustments.”

“I think this movie could make it through. Did you hear, Bobby de Niro's agreed to voice the dog?”

“No.”

“Okay, so the dog should be a Brit. But we lost that one. So if you have to have American, Bobby's as good as it gets. He's got that world-weary schtick down. I can just hear him drawling, ‘Every sheep is born to die.'”

“Is that back in?”

“You bet your sweet tootsie it's back in.”

“Will you get a credit?”

“See, that should have been your first question. Now you're talking like a pro. Do I get a credit? The answer is no. By the rules I have to contribute fifty percent or more, not just to the dialogue, but to the plot structure and character creation. And that I have not done. So guess what, Shakespeare? You get sole credit. Meaning for all my work, as well as yours. So who's the fucker here, and who's tied to the bed taking it up the ass for nothing?”

“Except money.”

“You're learning. I'll probably make more than you on this gig. But with sole credit on a hit movie, your quote goes way up. Next time you cash in.”

“And the movie never gets made.”

“You're there. Apprenticeship over.”

Alan shakes his head, marveling at it all.

“How long have you been doing this, Harlan?”

“Almost twenty years now.”

He sees the surprise on Alan's face.

“Yeah, I look like I'm fresh out of school. I'm thirty-eight. I have this pact with the Devil. I never age, and he gets all the onscreen credits.”

“I'm thirty-nine,” says Alan.

“You've written a couple of good plays. One seriously good play.”

“Now I feel ashamed.”

“For wanting to make money?”

“For not taking the trouble to find out more about you.”

“Not much to know. Here's something you won't get from Google. When I was sixteen I wrote a story, it was a school assignment. My teacher said to me, Harlan, I'm not even grading this. This is the real thing. You're that rare creature, Harlan. You're a writer.”

The brittle tone falls away from his voice as he tells this story. His gaze holds Alan's eyes.

“It was like he was saying to me, You're an angel.”

“So maybe you are.”

“Yeah, sure. Maybe. You make your choices, you live with them. And we have some fun along the way, right?”

Tap-tap
on the trailer door.

“That'll be Cas,” says Alan.

He opens the door and there's Cas all charged up with excuses.

“Billy had to go and I was thinking—”

“It's okay, Cas. Come on in.”

Cas comes in, looking round at the interior of the trailer.

“Wow! It's like a house!”

“How was Billy?” says Harlan.

“He was resting,” says Cas. “Actors have to have downtime.” He finds an iPad on the table. “Is this an iPad?”

“It is,” says Harlan. “Have a go with it.”

Cas sets to work at once, seeming to know by instinct how to operate it. Harlan watches him wistfully.

“You have children?” says Alan.

“One boy. He lives with his mother.”

“That's hard.”

“Yes, it's hard.”

His phone rings.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I'll be right over.”

He gives Alan an apologetic shrug.

“Duty calls.”

“Okay. We'll get back. Cas!”

Cas jumps up, his fingers still on the iPad.

“It's been a privilege, Alan.” Harlan offers his hand as he hooks up a bag full of scripts.

They go out into the now deserted space between the trailers. Harlan waves and sets off at a lope toward the film unit on the hillside. Alan and Cas walk back to the car.

“Did you tell him he'd messed up your script?” says Cas.

“No,” says Alan.

“Thought not.”

They're both silent as they drive home, each deep in thought. Then Cas breaks the silence.

“I'd do anything in the world to have an iPad,” he says. “But there just isn't anything, is there?”

“No,” says Alan.

“Thought not.”

Toby feels like all he's done for days is sit on the floor in Carrie's room and watch her cry. Time to move on, my friend. Always the same story.

Everything would be so easy if people would only let go. It's the clinging on to things that makes all the misery in the world. You can't hold living things, they're in motion, if you want them to stay you have to kill them. But say this to someone and they hear something different, they hear, I want to leave you, and they start to cry.

So Carrie cries. I try to tell her, but all she hears is this won't be forever, and if it's not forever it's going to end, and if it's going to end it's already dying. But hey, we're all dying. Every day a step nearer the end. What's new? But Carrie cries.

“You say I should live now,” she tells me, “now, you say, now. But you don't live now. If you did, how would you know you're going to leave? You wouldn't know it until you were doing it. So why do you have to say you'll leave?”

All of which is fair comment, but since when did I claim to practice what I preach? Since when did I preach? Say the first thing that comes into your head. Act without forethought.

Look, all I'm trying to do here is step lightly on the earth. Leave no trace. If I could shed my self I would.

“Don't sit so close,” I tell her. “I need space.”

She moves away.

“Come closer. Lie down beside me.”

She lies down beside me. What does she want from me?

Her manner with him though not her words says, Do with me what you will. She plays at disagreement, but she has submitted. The pleasure this gives him dwindles day by day. She senses this and fears she'll lose him. In her fear she seeks to please him more, and so he becomes cruel.

“You watch me too much. Close your eyes when you look at me.”

She closes her eyes.

“Don't do what I tell you to do.”

She doesn't and so she does. Trapped in the mesh of his will. And as for Toby, caught in another repeating pattern, he grows bored.

I'm so fucking bored of being bored. Let's play a game. “Pretend you hate me,” he says.

“Pretend you despise me. Tell me stuff to hurt me.”

“You're a cunt,” she says.

That makes him laugh. She says it so carefully, like it's a technical term. Then she's happy she's made him laugh, which isn't the idea of the game at all.

“Try harder,” he says.

“You have no emotions. You love only yourself.”

“If only that were so,” he says.

“You're a narcissist. All you see in other people are mirrors of yourself.”

“Closer,” he says.

“I don't hate you,” she says. “You hate yourself.”

“Closer,” he says.

But still it doesn't hurt.

I am invulnerable. This is my deformity.

These are dangerous thoughts, these glimpses of the demon. He rations them, because always they come with an intoxication of the blood, a beautiful poisoning, that makes him thirsty for pain. His own pain, the pain of others. The demon feeds on shock and dismay.

I am one sick fuck.

All you can do is move on. You don't ask people to love you. You don't make promises. You don't offer gifts. You don't deceive. But they want the demon, that's the truth. They long for the demon's hurting kiss. So we're all sick together.

She says, “Come out in the car with me.”

They go out driving.

Every time they come out in the car Toby is possessed by an urge to take the wheel and drive them into the oncoming traffic. So it's good that it's Carrie who's driving.

“Imagine driving on the wrong side of the road,” he says. “All those cars coming straight at you. All those moments you could die.”

“You want to die?”

“No. I want to be inside those moments when I could die.”

“What happened to you, Toby? Why are you such a freak?”

“Usual story,” says Toby. “Too much of this. Too little of that.”

Over the Phoenix Causeway, the river running low.

“I've stayed long enough,” he says. “Time to be on the road again.”

“What road?”

“The road away.”

She drives in silence, past the old bus station to the traffic lights at the bottom of the High Street. Her body has gone stiff. She grinds the gears into neutral, brakes at the red light.

“So that's what you do,” she says. “You start things you don't finish. You hit and run.”

“What were you expecting? Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind?”

“Oh, fuck off, Toby.”

So of course he finds her pain exciting. It's not wanting to hurt, it's wanting to be in the place where pain happens.

“You know self-harming?” he says.

“Yeah,” she says. “I know self-harming. That your next cool idea?”

“People can do it without razors.”

“You don't say.”

The lights change, the traffic rolls on up Friars Walk. Ahead is the tricky intersection where Station Road crosses and cars come from all directions.

“So just tell me, Toby. Where do I come in? I mean, like, what is this? What are we doing here? I'd just like to know.”

“Me too,” he says.

“Not good enough. Try harder.”

Now she's negotiating the intersection, heading across into Southover Road. There are cars parked all down one side, which makes it a tight squeeze for two-way traffic. She has tears waiting in her eyes.

Bad situation. Trapped in a moving car, under pressure from demands you can't meet. The urge to break out can make you crazy. Time to kick doors, break windows.

“Don't push me,” he says.

“No, you owe me. You don't just walk away. Jesus, did I ever ask you for a fucking thing? All I want to know is, do I exist for you? Do you have any feelings for me of any kind whatsoever? On the road again. Jesus!”

“What do you want, Carrie? I stay in Jack's room for the rest of my life?”

“No! Of course you'll go! I know that! I'm not a child!”

“So I'll go.”

“Do you love anyone, Toby? Have you ever loved anyone?”

Why don't you love me? Make me suffer more. Cut my arms with your blades.

“You tell me what that means,” he says, “I'll tell you if I've got it.”

“It means it hurts to leave,” she says fiercely.

“You could put that in a song. Loving means it hurts to leave.”

She gasps at that, as if he's hit her. The demon did that to her. Now she's driving too fast.

“Leaving means it hurts to love,” he says. “Hurting means it loves to leave.”

He can't help himself. The demon is running free and he must follow.

“On the road again,” she says, staring ahead as she drives. “On the road again. On the road again.”

Her mantra against pain. But she's the one who summoned the demon. You get what you ask for in this world.

“You know what, Toby.” Talking fast now, driving fast. “This is all a joke, because I don't do the girly thing, I don't do flirting, I'm just fine being who I am. I'm not saying I'm any better than anyone else, I'm just saying I'm
me
and I'm good with that and I don't dress up as
not-me
for anyone. And you show up and I'm, how about this? Here's someone I can be
me
around, here's someone who does a really good imitation of connecting with actual
me
. So I let myself think maybe connections do happen, maybe we're not all
me
, maybe sometimes we can be
us
, and you give me this shit about being on the road again. And that's quite a joke, isn't it? That really is a good one. Because you're going nowhere. So why do I care? I'm such a fucking mess-up, look at me, Jesus! Why don't we just all roll over and die? I mean, what is there out there worth sticking round for? There's no party, right? So why
am I crying? Why am I humiliating myself when you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself? Oh sure, I'll put it in a song, I'll put it all in a song. Only when I sing it you won't be there to hear, you'll be on the fucking road again—”