Memphis Movie (21 page)

“Who's Cash McCall?”

“That's what Reuben called Eden.”

“Wonderful.”

Eric, shame-faced, approached his star.

“Hope, you've been more than patient. We're supposed to shoot the living room scene, aren't we?”

“Yes. Is it too late?”

“No, no,” Eric said. Did he have the juice to shoot more? He did. It was Hope Davis.

“Ok, I'm ready when you are.”

“Yes. Let's shoot it. It is just you.”

“It is just me.”

“Yes.”

Eric was stumbling like an amateur.

“I mean, yes,” he said. “Of course. It's the scene where you are on the phone. Right. Right. Ok, let's get that set up.”

Eric hustled about now. This will be a cakewalk, he thought. I can do this scene with my eyes closed. Five minutes of film. That's all they were looking at. Five good minutes.

Rica Sash, as if anticipating Eric's fumbling, had begun setting up the living room shot. Eric's heart rose. God, he's good, Eric thought. And the set looks beautiful. He never said, dress the set. He never had to—it was beautiful, naturally beautiful, as if it had grown there organically, like a garden. He must remember to send flowers to the set decorator. What the hell was her name?

Her name is Kay. Kay Tell. Can that be right?

At any rate, the set was a small masterpiece, a living room that looked ready for living, for the living. Then why, Eric stopped to wonder, was Eric's father sitting in the La-Z-Boy?

50.

Early evening. A rented house in Midtown Memphis.

Jimbo Cole is lying on the couch, his head in Sandy's lap. She is absentmindedly twisting his hair in her fingers. They seem to have spent their conversational energies.

When Eric enters Jimbo's eyes widen in mock alarm.

“Oh no, boss, we're caught!” he says.

Eric looks tired and offers no return of serve.

“Did you talk to Eden?” Sandy asks.

“I did not,” Eric says.

“I think he might be going off on a new toot,” she says.

“Great. What's his bug this time?”

“He's talking about replacing Dan.”

“Fuck me. Dan is making this movie work.”

“He wants Reliable Smith.”

“Who's Reliable Smith? Sounds like a cowboy.”

“You're thinking of Whispering Smith. You know Reliable. He was in De Palma's last film.”

“Can't place him. What is he, the hot new actor this week?”

“Yes, I think so. As famous for firing his agent as for his work.”

“He fired his agent.”

“For not getting him the Wilson Pickett funeral.”

“Wilson Pickett? I'm sorry, am I particularly dense today?”

“You remember the funeral was a who's who, a proof of insiderness, a badge of hipness. Well, Reliable got squeezed out when Prince called at the last minute and said he was coming.”

“Well, hell.”

“Oh, and also he wants you to see if we can get Lizabeth Scott. Apparently, Eden's just seen a movie called
Too Late for Tears
and he's gaga for her.”

“For Christ's sake. Wait—is she still alive?”

“I can check.”

“Do it.”

“He also asked if I thought Sash was Jewish.”

“Great,” Eric says. “Just great. I'm blocking Eden's calls until he gets over this. His passions are notoriously short-lived. What are we doing tonight? What godawful meeting do we have lined up?”

“You're in a good mood,” Jimbo says.

Eric looks at him without emotion. He suddenly cannot fathom who he is, what his connection to the movie, or his life is. Sandy he knows.

“Sandy, can I talk to you in the bedroom?” Eric says.

“Sorry,” Jimbo says, sitting up. “I'll wait in the backyard. That's a terrific Japanese garden back there.”

Is there, Eric thought, a Japanese garden in the back yard?

“What is it?” Sandy says when they're alone.

“I saw my father.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it. I've seen him twice now. Is it twice? Or is it three times?”

“I'm sure I don't know. You mean, you've seen him, like in your dreams?”

“No.”

“You've seen him walking around?”

“Sitting mostly. He just sits there, offering wisdom, counsel.”

“Ok.”

“I mean it, Sandy. Dammit.”

“Ok, dear. And you want me to know this because?”

“Because you love me. Because you might be able to explain why I'm seeing ghosts.”

“Plural.”

“Well, yeah, Dad, you know . . . and . . . Elvis.”

“You've seen Elvis!” Sandy squeals in ersatz delight.

“You know—in the photos.”

“You're on board then. With Ricky Lime, I mean?”

“Shit. No. It's just that—something is slipping—it's beyond my grasp. And Dad, he was so solid—so empirical. He's here for a reason.”

Sandy looked at Eric the way Claudette Colbert looked at Gable's hitchhiking instructions.

“I thought the shoot went well today. Are you concerned about the location shots—because—”

“No. No. I don't know. The location shoot—well, hell, it'll be ok. Rica's—God, where would I be without Rica Sash?”

“So, what's slipping?”

Eric looked at Sandy for a long time. He wasn't used to explaining things to her. You
know
no one, he thought. Suddenly, he doesn't know her either. You spend your whole life with a person and they remain a stranger who can, at any moment, do something you would have sworn was impossible for their character. At any moment the person next to you on the couch can turn into Mr. Hyde. Or worse. A Republican. A child molester. Someone who defends Bobby Knight. A stranger.

“Sandy,” Eric said now, his voice a child's, “is it a movie? Do you think what we've shot is coherent, is—I don't know—building toward a story?”

“Biscuit, we've always flown this way, seat-of-pants. We've always worked without a net. It used to energize you, excite you. You always said, if they knew how we make these things they'd never believe in them. You said, nobody knows how to make a movie.”

“I know. It's just, well, this movie—it's this or nothing, right? They're gonna take my toys away.”

“Maybe. So what.”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “So what. What's one more washed-up director? The glittering highway is strewn with their talentless bodies.”

“Untalented.”

“Wordsmith.”

“Come here, Biscuit. Put your two heads here.”

And Eric did. He rested his face against Sandy's chest, a place still of comfort, a place unburnished by the ravages of time. He knew Sandy. She was the woman who loved him without reservation.

51.

Dan Yumont thought about his ménage-à-trois and he thought that it was good. He thought that it would last throughout the shoot and that it would stave off boredom. He hated the hours when he wasn't acting, the ones he had to fill with furious activity of some sort. If you believed the tabloids you would think just the opposite was true, that Dan Yumont existed only for the affair, the wild night, the dissolute nighttime.

He now sat across from Ray Verbely and watched her putting fried shrimp into her pretty mouth. The evening with her and Suze Everingham had made Ray Dan's odalisque. The debauchery had created a monster, one that was stuck to Dan with its suckered tentacles. She looked at him with misty eyes.

Dan's phone vibrated continuously against his thigh like another organ. He regretted giving Dudu the number.

Suze Everingham worked her way across the restaurant, signing autographs and smiling her beauty queen smile. In crowds it only took one recognition to set off a chain. Dan had already run the gauntlet and, with the restaurant owner's complicity, had been shunted to a darkened corner where he was protected by the wait staff. Now the other eaters only glanced shyly at his table. Ray Verbely made eye contact with them all. She winked and grinned as if the attention was for her.

“Helloo, Sweets,” Suze said, bussing Dan's cheek.

“And you,” Suze said, leaning over to press her lips against Ray's. Ray looked startled and tried to quickly reconfigure her face as if this sort of thing were common.

“What's good here?” she asked, sitting. “Do they have menus or do we just ask for anything and they bring it?”

Ray Verbely thought that perhaps that was how Hollywood restaurants work. These people were treated like kings and queens.

“Just order fried things,” Dan said. “They fry everything here.”

It was unclear whether he meant this eatery or the South in general.

“How 'bout that scene today?” Suze said. She looked like a pleased animal.

“Good stuff,” Dan said.

“You were—you were phenomenal,” she gushed.

“You also,” Dan batted back.

“I mean—you took that thing to—to places I wasn't prepared to go. I was just hanging on, hoping I didn't tumble down the precipice.”

“No, now. You more than held your own. It was pretty good stuff. Sandy's script—it has some surprising turns to it. I've been looking over some of the later scenes. I am—I am impressed.”

This was quite a pronouncement from the word-stingy actor. The women were both goggle-eyed. A silence like worship fell over the table. A waiter came and went. More food was brought. Drinks. They all ate under that silence.

“Do you want to run some lines tonight?” Suze asked after a while. Liquor made her cheeks rosy.

“Or else what,” Dan said.

“Right.”

“We could go dancing instead,” Ray said.

Discomfiture quickly flashed around the table like sheet lightning.

“Or we could go back to my place and fuck,” Ray said, trying to recover. Her hole was getting deeper.

“Now that's an alternative I could go with,” Dan said. He smiled at Ray. Now Ray's heart was about to burst.

“We can certainly do both,” Suze Everingham said, with insouciance.

“We can,” Dan said.

52.

Lorax slept in Camel's lap, curled up like a cat. Her whole body, a soft ring, fit on top of him. Camel was watching an episode of
Gunsmoke.
He was sure he'd seen it before but something was different about it. Then it occurred to him. It was shorter. Pieces were missing. Small pieces of time clipped off around the myriad commercials. It didn't matter. Camel liked the commercials as much as the show, though he fondly remembered when they were all one minute long, instead of the 15-second, bombastic brain-attack they were now. They came at you like a burst of fireworks. That they could get you in 15 seconds seemed frightening and it would have frightened Camel if he hadn't just lit up some Thai stick that he had been saving. It was powerfully mellow stuff and it was why Lorax slept so soundly in his lap.

Fido lay near the door, the better to watch the sheep. Except, now he was sleeping, too, his little legs jumping about, dreaming of things humans would never understand, of the Meadows of Cockaigne, where he ran free.

There was a gentle knock on the screen door. Even though the temperature outside was a crisp 55, the inner door stood open. Camel liked the chill. It reminded him that he was animal and that he was alive.

“Yep,” he said in response to the knock.

“Camel?” the voice said softly from outside. Camel didn't know the voice and he couldn't see around the door jamb.

“Enter,” Camel said.

Eric slipped inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the murk. During that time Camel sat, smiling like a child.

“Hey, man,” Eric said. He'd never called anyone man before in his life, not that he recollected.

“Hey, sit down, sit down,” Camel said, softly.

“She's asleep,” Eric said. It wasn't his usual habit to state the obvious. Something about his surroundings upset his mental apple cart. This used to be his turf, this Midtown Memphis boho scene. Now it seemed—quaint, antiquated, as if he had time-traveled, as if he were in that
Twilight Zone
episode where the guy boards a train and gets off in his youth.

“Lorax,” Camel said.

Then Eric recognized the pixie delivery girl.

“Oh!” he said. “She's real, real.”

“Firmly,” Camel said.

“I thought—Jesus, I thought she only materialized to bring your blues to me.” He barked a quick laugh.