Run With the Hunted (58 page)

“Look,” said Jon, “he has a periscope sticking out of the roof so he can see who's coming …”

“Jesus …”

“Listen, I've got to set things up …”

“All right … See you …”

Funny thing about Jon. His French accent was slipping away as he spoke only English here in America. It was a little sad.

Then the door of Jack's trailer opened. It was Jack.

“Hey, come on in!”

We went up the steps. There was a tv on. A young girl was lying in a bunk watching the tv.

“This is Cleo. I bought her a bike. We ride together.”

There was a fellow sitting at the end.

“This is my brother, Doug …”

I moved toward Doug, did a little shadow boxing in front of him. He didn't say anything. He just stared. Cool number. Good. I liked cool numbers.

“Got anything to drink?” I asked Jack.

“Sure …”

Jack found some whiskey, poured me a whiskey and water.

“Thanks …”

“You care for some?” he asked Sarah.

“Thanks,” she said, “I don't like to mix drinks.”

“She's on Cape Cods,” I said.

“Oh …”

Sarah and I sat down. The whiskey was good.

“I like this place,” I said.

“Stay as long as you like,” said Jack.

“Maybe we'll stay forever …”

Jack gave me his famous smile.

“Your brother doesn't say much, does he?”

“No, he doesn't.”

“A cool number.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Jack, you memorized your lines?”

“I never look at my lines until right before the shooting.”

“Great. Well, listen, we've got to be going.”

“I know you can do it, Jack,” said Sarah, “we're glad you got the lead.”

“Thanks …”

Back at the bar the barflies were still there and they didn't look any drunker. It took a lot to buzz a pro.

Sarah had another Cape Cod. I went back to the Vodka seven.

We drank and there were more stories. I even told one. Maybe an hour went by. Then I looked up and there was Jack standing looking over the swinging doors in the entrance. I could just see his head.

“Hey, Jack,” I yelled, “come on in and have a drink!”

“No, Hank, we're going to shoot now. Why don't you come up and watch?”

“Be right there, baby …”

We ordered up another pair of drinks. We were working on them when Jon walked in.

“We're going to shoot now,” he said.

“All right,” said Sarah.

“All right,” I said.

We finished our drinks and I got a couple of bottles of beer to take with us.

We followed Jon up the stairway and into the room. Cables everywhere. Technicians were moving about.

“I'll bet they could shoot a movie with about one-third of these fucking people.”

“That's what Friedman says.”

“Friedman is sometimes right.”

“All right,” said Jon, “we're just about ready. We've had a few dry runs. Now we shoot. You,” he said to me, “stand in this corner. You can watch from here and not be in the scene.”

Sarah moved back there with me.

“SILENCE!” screamed Jon's assistant director, “WE'RE GETTING READY TO ROLL!”

It became very quiet.

Then from Jon: “CAMERA! ACTION!”

The door to the room opened and Jack Bledsoe weaved in. Shit, it was the young Chinaski! It was me! I felt a tender aching within me. Youth, you son of a bitch, where did you go?

I wanted to be the young drunk again. I wanted to be Jack Bledsoe. But I was just the old guy in the corner, sucking on a beer.

Bledsoe weaved to the window by the table. He pulled up the tattered shade. He did a little shadow boxing, a smile on his face. Then he sat down at the table, found a pencil and a piece of paper. He sat there a while, then pulled the cork from a wine bottle, had a hit, lit a cigarette. He turned on the radio and lucked into Mozart.

He began writing on that piece of paper with the pencil as the scene faded …

He had it. He had it the way it was, whether it meant anything or not, he had it the way it was.

I walked up to Jack, shook his hand.

“Did I get it?” he asked.

“You got it,” I said …

Down at the bar, the barflies were still at it and they looked about the same.

Sarah went back to her Cape Cods and I went the Vodka seven route. We heard more stories which were very very good. But there was a sadness in the air because after the movie was shot the bar and hotel were going to be torn down to further some commercial purpose. Some of the regulars had lived in the hotel for decades. Others lived in a deserted train station nearby and action was being taken to remove them from there. So it was heavy sad drinking.

Sarah said finally, “We've got to get home and feed the cats.”

Drinking could wait.

Hollywood could wait.

The cats could not wait.

I agreed.

We said our goodbyes to the barflies and made it to the car. I wasn't worried about driving. Something about seeing young Chinaski in that old hotel room had steadied me. Son of a bitch, I had been a hell of a young bull. Really a top-notch fuck-up.

Sarah was worried about the future of the barflies. I didn't like it either. On the other hand I couldn't see them sitting around our front room, drinking and telling their stories. Sometimes charm lessens when it gets too close to reality. And how many brothers can you keep?

I drove on in. We got there.

The cats were waiting.

Sarah got down and cleaned their bowls and I opened the cans.

Simplicity, that's what was needed.

We went upstairs, washed, changed, made ready for bed.

“What are those poor people going to do?” asked Sarah.

“I know. I know …”

Then it was time for sleep. I went downstairs for a last look, came back up. Sarah was asleep. I turned out the light. We slept. Having seen the movie made that afternoon we were now somehow different, we would never think or talk quite the same. We now knew something more but what it was seemed very vague and even perhaps a bit disagreeable.

—
H
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The bathtub scene was a simple one. Francine was to sit in the tub and Jack Bledsoe was to sit with his back against it, there on the floor, while Francine sat in the water talking about various things, mainly about a killer who lived there in her budding, now on parole. He was shacked up with an old woman and beat her continually. One could hear the killer and his lady ranting and cursing through the walls.

Jon Pinchot had asked me to write the sound of people cursing through the walls and I had given him several pages of dialog. Basically, that had been the most enjoyable part of writing the screenplay.

Oftentimes in those roominghouses and cheap apartments there was nothing to do when you were broke and starving and down to the last bottle. There was nothing to do but listen to those wild arguments. It made you realize that you weren't the only one who was more than discouraged with the world, you weren't the only one moving toward madness.

We couldn't watch the bathtub scene because there just wasn't space enough in there, so Sarah and I waited in the front room of the apartment with its kitchen off to the side. Actually, over 30 years ago I had briefly lived in that same building on Alvarado Street with the lady I was writing the screenplay about. Strange and chilling indeed. “Everything that goes around comes around.” In one way or another. And after 30 years the place looked just about the same. Only the people I'd known had all died. And the lady had died 3 decades ago and there I was sitting drinking a beer in that same building full of cameras and sound and crew. Well, I'd the too, soon enough. Pour one for me.

They were cooking food in the little kitchen and the refrigerator was full of beers. I made a few trips in there. Sarah found people to talk to. She was lucky. Every time somebody spoke to me I felt like diving out a window or taking the elevator down. People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.

Jon Pinchot was still one day ahead of the shooting schedule and I was damned glad for that. It kept Firepower off our backs. The big boys didn't come around. They had their spies, of course. I could pick them out.

Some of the crew had books of mine. They asked for autographs. The books they had were curious ones. That is, I didn't consider them my best. (My best book is always the last one that I have written.) Some of them had a book of my early dirty stories,
Jacking-Off the Devil
. A few had books of poems,
Mozart In the Fig Tree
and
Would You Let This Man Babysit Your 4-Year-Old Daughter?
Also,
The Bar Latrine Is My Chapel
.

The day wafted on, peacefully but listlessly.

Some bathtub scene, I thought. Francine must be fully cleansed by now.

Then Jon Pinchot just about ran into the room. He looked undone. Even his zipper was only halfway up. He was uncombed. His eyes looked wild and drained at the same time.

“My god!” he said, “here you are!”

“How's it going?”

He leaned over and whispered into my ear. “It's awful, it's maddening! Francine is worried that her tits might show above the water! She keeps asking ‘Do my tits show?'”

“What's a little titty?”

Jon leaned closer. “She's not as young as she'd like to be … And Hyans hates the lighting … He can't abide the lighting and he's drinking more than ever …”

Hyans was the cameraman. He'd won damn near every award and prize in the business, one of the best cameramen alive, but like most good souls he liked a drink now and then.

Jon went on, whispering frantically: “And Jack, he can't get this one line right. We have to cut again and again. There is something about the line that bothers him and he gets this silly smile on his face when he says it.”

“What's the line?”

“The line is, ‘He must masturbate his parole officer when he comes around.'”

“All right, try, ‘He must jack-off his parole officer when he comes around.'”

“Good, thank you! THIS IS GOING TO BE THE NINETEENTH TAKE!”

“My god,” I said.

“Wish me luck …”

“Luck ....”

Jon was out of the room then. Sarah walked over.

“What's wrong?”

“Nineteenth take. Francine is afraid to show her tits, Jack can't say his line and Hyans doesn't like the lighting …”