Slow Fade (13 page)

He opened the door and A.D. followed him into the other room.

Wesley was sitting with Evelyn on the couch. Everyone else had gone. Whatever had gone down with the agent and hotel manager, it had left them in a different mood and they seemed more relaxed, even somewhat animated. Wesley got up and spread his arms, including them in a sudden benediction.

“Every time I shake the goddamned tree and more rotten apples fall out, I think, that’s it, I’m free, and even though I know there are always more, I’m grateful these particular ones are on the ground.”

“Amen,” Evelyn said.

She had curled into the corner of the couch and was looking up at Wesley with great wariness as he put an arm around Sidney and kissed him on the cheek, talking loudly into his ear.

“Your video camera sliced straight through the awning and almost took a guy’s head off. Turns out that one of my pictures,
Wishbone
, is in his all-time top-five pantheon, and he refuses to make a complaint. All he wants is an autographed copy of the script. Funny, I can’t even remember who wrote it. But I don’t take anything back about the video machine. I hate it. Let’s never mention it again. I tell you what, though, you and me, Sidney, we have to keep shooting. That’s all we’re good for, peering through the lens. But now we’ll mix in some scenes from Walker’s script. What do you think, AD.?”

“You’re the boss,” A.D. said, trying to make whatever switch was called for.

A.D. had not fully recovered from the shock of seeing Wesley and Evelyn for the first time, having been blind, of course, back in New Mexico. He had imagined Wesley six inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier, not this frail and precarious old man who was so obviously on the drift. And he felt unnerved and totally unprepared for Evelyn, with her absence of show business persona, the almost lethal way she sat within her own silence, how physically strong and elastic her body seemed inside her black jeans and simple white T-shirt.

Wesley sat down on the couch and lifted one of Evelyn’s bare feet to kiss. “I want to get moving on India, bring all of that together. It might be time to pull the plug on this screwed-up country and sign up for a location trip. That’s always the best part, when you’re just looking and not trying to force it all into some mediocre story line.”

He paused, staring off across the room, then back again to A.D. “Where’s Walker?” he asked, with sudden alarm.

“He’s driving from Vegas to Albany. He said it was time to find out if Clementine was still alive. I guess there’s somebody there who knows.”

“She’s alive,” Wesley said flatly. “The script demands it.”

A.D. took the new pages out of his briefcase and handed them to Wesley.

“And how is Walker?” Wesley asked, uneasily flipping through the pages. “Has he managed to find any kind of reality for himself?”

“I don’t know about reality,” A.D. said. “But he’s nailed to the script, and that keeps him straight. He doesn’t say much and he hangs out by himself. Of course I’ve been watching out for him, seeing that he doesn’t graze off or get into trouble, and that’s been a full-time job. I’m here to tell you that. He’s more sideways than streetwise, you understand, so I’ve had to keep him on a short leash. I busted his ass a few times to make sure the pages got squeezed out and I fixed up a few scenes, gave them a wash and a rinse. I guess you know that he’s not a natural-born writer, but when the mood is on him he can burn. Other than that, my main problem is living with the one eye.”

A.D. paused and went over to the other couch and sat down next to Sidney, who had made himself a tall brandy and soda and wasn’t listening to any of it. “It hasn’t been easy,” A.D. said slowly. “Some actions won’t never be the same.”

“The patch works real well,” Wesley said, bragging on him. “I’d cast you as a heavy anytime.”

“You already did,” A.D. said. “Which reminds me, I’ll need some scratch for those new pages and for those times I helped Walker out in Vegas.”

“Was it roulette?” Wesley asked.

“Mostly blackjack. One bad run.”

“Drugs?”

“Just maintenance and travel aids.”

“Women?”

“I set him up a time or two.”

“I’m grateful,” Wesley said, with what looked like tears in his eyes. “Would a few grand do you?”

“For now. Of course the game has changed a little and I’m sure you’ll appreciate that. I’m one of the producers now. Walker and I signed a paper to that effect, and if you sign that’ll make it official.”

“I don’t care who the producer is,” Wesley said, signing the paper A.D. offered him. “We’ll need more than one producer before we’re through. But this is the core group. This is it. After all these years this is the gang I finish up with.”

Sidney drained his brandy and soda. “What about me? I don’t want to finish up with you but I wouldn’t mind making a deal.”

“You’re my trigger man,” Wesley said impatiently. “Without you I don’t see.”

Evelyn uncurled herself from the couch, looking bored and weary. “I’m going to get some air, if there is any out there.”

Wesley sprang to his feet. “We’ll go over to the Russian Tea Room for borscht and a few drinks.”

They took the elevator down to the lobby and entered into the dense August night. In his pale blue pajama pants and karate jacket Wesley looked like an old martial arts freak who had wandered in from the park.

Wesley had trouble breathing and they sat down on a bench, their backs to the park, watching the street and the soft parade of people floating in and out of the Plaza and the movie house next door.

“I can’t believe Clementine has really disappeared,” Wesley said abruptly, his lungs struggling for air. “I can’t grasp that. I was angry. Sure. She gives you no warning. But I certainly wasn’t totally rejecting.”

Evelyn looked at him with alarm and started to rub the back of his neck but he shook her off.

“Okay. I know,” he said. “I won’t get stuck back there. What’s important is that we all get into the same room again.”

He paused, staring back into the dark and silent park.

Sidney chose that moment to stand up and state his case to Wesley, something he had never done before. His pants and short-sleeved shirt were matted with sweat, and as he talked he pulled nervously at the tired flesh around his neck. “One minute you tell me I’m working for you and it’s good steady work and don’t worry, just pull the trigger. Then you don’t pay me and when I say, okay, it’s my film, you say, hey, we’ll find the form, don’t get attached. And now you pull me into an Indian project with your looney-tunes son and say, ‘Just stay in the moment, baby.’ I need
form
, Wesley. I’m an A to B man. Always have been, always will be. I don’t mind playing and picking up spontaneous stuff, but pay me and give me an overall plan. And don’t keep telling me it’s my film or our film or your film or it’s not a film but a ‘probe into the unknown.’ You’re messing with my mind. And then to top it all off, A.D. starts pitching me about joining forces with him and making an end run on you. It’s no good, Wesley. You’ve got to give me a real target and you’ve got to be straight with me.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Wesley said.

This agreement took Sidney by surprise, and he stepped into and out of the park before he spoke to Wesley again. “Call me when you know what you want,” he said. Then he crossed the street and walked across the square in front of the Plaza and disappeared down Fifth Avenue.

“Don’t worry about Sidney,” Wesley said. “He gets this way. Everyone does in this business. I’ll make a deal with him and he’ll quiet down. The truth is, he has a great pair of eyes and can enter into a space better than anyone I know. And it’s my pleasure to exploit myself right now. I need to do that.”

“Why?” Evelyn asked. “Why do you need to do that?”

Wesley looked at her a long time before he answered. “I have to hold on. If I don’t hold on, I’ll fall off. If I fall off, I’m lost forever.”

“Lost and gone forever,” Evelyn sang, leaning over and kissing him. “Dreadful sorry, Clementine.”

WESLEY
stood up and, with Evelyn and A.D. flanking him, walked alongside the park to Seventh Avenue and then south to Fifty-seventh Street. The Russian Tea Room was crowded, and Wesley pushed his way past the bar to the dining room. The maître d’ failed to recognize him and bluntly refused him a table. As Wesley started to protest, his hand pulling vaguely at the maître d’s lapel, a youthful figure in starched jeans and custom-made white Jamaica leisure shirt bounded toward him from a rear table.

“Oh, Christ,” Evelyn muttered, unable to make an exit because of the steady crush of people pushing up behind her.

“Mr. Hardin. My God!” The youthful figure brushed past the maitre d’ and claimed Wesley’s arm. “How propitious. We were just talking about you. The way you’ve handled the press the past few weeks has been extraordinary.”

“Do I know you?”

“Of course. It’s just that all of us young moguls look alike these days. Bud Serkin.”

“Warners?”

“Universal.”

“On the way in or on the way out?”

“Hopefully sliding into the middle. Please, Mr. Hardin, you must join us. There’s an old admirer of yours back there who will absolutely kill me if I let you slip away.”

They followed Bud Serkin to his table, squeezing in around a handsome gray-haired woman and a delicately featured young man in lightly tinted dark glasses and a blue business suit whose thick blond hair was swept back from his forehead in a Rod Stewart brush.

“Long time no see,” the woman said to Wesley.

“Hello, Sheila,” Wesley said. “I thought you were dead.”

“Just buried alive.”

“It was always hard to tell with you.”

“Indeed.” She turned her hard gray eyes on Evelyn. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new wife? Or is this your daughter?”

“Evelyn,” Wesley said. “Sheila someone or other. An old associate of mine.”

“You’ll never forgive me for that lawsuit, will you?” Sheila asked.

“I never mind lawsuits,” Wesley said. “Even between friends. It’s who you have been revealed to be that’s unforgivable.”

“That’s true,” A.D. interjected, trying to get into the flow. “I’m suing him myself.”

“There you go,” Wesley said. “And this man is my producer.”

“I heard you had another project launched,” Bud Serkin said. “I must congratulate you on that. India or someplace, isn’t it?”

“India. My son is scripting it.”

“We have about twenty million in frozen rupees over there. I wish we could arrange for you to spend some of it for the studio, but with all the litigation surrounding you these days that’s clearly impossible.”

“We’ll set up a meeting anyway,” Sheila said. “You never know when one meeting might mutate into another, thus a project is born. Henry will see to it, won’t you, dear?”

She patted the blond young man on the cheek. He nodded and made a note on a slip of paper with a gold-tipped pen.

“No meeting,” Bud Serkin said. “But a dinner would be lovely. It’s time for some sort of retrospective for Wesley. A testimonial. Hawks and Hitchcock had one. I even think old Sam Fuller must have had one.”

Sheila finished patting the young man’s cheek and smiled at Wesley. “Then you, too, will be buried alive.”

Wesley nodded, not bothering to reply. He felt himself being pulled away as if he were floating above them, looking down on himself as well. From a distance he became aware of their words but was unable to distinguish any separate meanings so that the language flowed together into one sound, joining the larger sound of the room. He had the thought that he was wheeling above them for a crane shot, and he found it funny that the actors should be so out of control beneath him. He tried to form the words “who’s directing?” but the words wouldn’t form or they weren’t hearing him. “Wesley, Wesley,” it was Evelyn’s voice, reaching out to him. But it was too late.

“For god’s sake, why do you let him go out in this shape?” Wesley dimly heard Sheila ask Evelyn. “He’s on his last legs.”

“He does what he wants to do,” Evelyn said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, rubbish. You can’t just let him get drunk and pass out on the table like some kind of degenerate.”

Evelyn stared hard at Sheila, so that Sheila had to lift up her glass and look away. “It’s not that I give a damn,” Sheila said. “It’s just that it’s distasteful and unnecessary.”

“I agree,” Wesley said thickly. “If you want a deal talk to my producer over here.”

“I’m not making a deal with anyone,” A.D. said. “Not even myself.” He helped Wesley out of his chair and all three of them made their way back through the crowd and onto the street.

They walked toward Seventh Avenue until Wesley became dizzy again and sat down on the steps of Carnegie Hall. To one side a blind violinist in a New York Yankees cap played the Bach Chaconne.

“Are you in pain?” Evelyn asked.

“Not hardly,” Wesley replied. As if to prove his point he stood up and tapped the violinist on the shoulder. Handing him a wad of bills, he took up the violin and started to play, the bow scratching over the strings as he sang in a hoarse baritone:

“ ’Twas on the tenth of March, my friend,

As you may understand.

Two men from Labrador

Started for Newfoundland.

’Twas eight o’clock in the morning

As they left Point Amour,

To travel across those gloomy straits

Those men from Labrador.

They had four dogs and a komatik

And a little canvas boat.

A mail bag and three nights’ grub

And that was all she wrote.”

He handed the fiddle back and started out again for Fifty-ninth Street. When they reached the park he turned and walked inside. A.D. angrily watched him go. “What kind of a joust is that? That might play in Hollywood or up there in Labrador, but that won’t last an hour on my street.”

Evelyn sat down on the same bench they had shared before, the one facing the Plaza. She shut her eyes, as if wanting to shut it all out.

“So I say, what am I fooling around making deals with him for?” A.D. went on, sitting down and impulsively picking up her hand.

“He might have one film left in him,” she said, opening her eyes and looking at him.

He asked her if she wanted a drink and when she said yes he took her downtown.

“He must have put a special hook into you for you to put up with all his jive,” A.D. said in the cab. “Great man that he is.”

“No hook,” she said and smiled. “When I was a kid we used to play a game called Green Gravel. We’d hold hands and go around in a circle. The person whose name you said would have to turn and go around with his back to the circle. Then we’d all sing:

“Green gravel, green gravel.

The grass is so green.

And all the fair ladies

Are shamed to be seen.

Oh,
someone,
oh,
someone.

Your true love is dead.

I’ll send you a letter

To turn ’round your head.”

“Are you trying to tell me someone’s dead?” A.D. asked as they got out of the cab at Sheridan Square and entered a dimly lit bar-restaurant.

“Not really,” she said. “Just that I don’t really believe in true love.”

A thin, middle-aged black woman sat behind the piano and sang sad songs in a small plaintive voice. They sat through the set and had several drinks, and when A.D. asked Evelyn for her back story she sighed and said that she didn’t like to get into any of that but then she had another drink and told him anyway.

“My father was Eskimo. My mother German. She came to Labrador as a nurse on the Moravian freight boat and she stayed on when she met my father. They started a trading post up on the northern end of Labrador, near Hebron. It was a lonely place, but there were five of us kids and we roamed pretty wild and never seemed to mind the isolation. When we got older we always made a point of coming home at the end of the summer and helping out however we could, and then we would all get into my father’s boat and spend a few weeks hunting and fishing. This one summer I had come up from St. John’s, where I had been laid off from clerking in a store and was waiting for an opening as a schoolteacher. Everyone was there but my oldest brother, who was off working on a trawler, so when we set off we had a full boat.

“Two days after we landed up at the inlet where we kept a fishing shack a big thunderstorm came down and the lightning struck the boat, went down the mast, burned a hole through the boat, and blew the radio to pieces. So we were cut off, but we didn’t think much about it, my father going ahead fixing the boat while my two younger brothers went inland to fish on one of the lakes and maybe get some deer or caribou. I stayed around the shack with my sister and mother, helping my father a little and cooking and picking berries and putting in a supply of wood. It was all work we were used to and none of it was hard and we were having a good time when my youngest brother, Duncan, walked in and collapsed before we could get him inside the shack. He was shaking and having trouble breathing, and he said that my other brother, Early, had the same thing but was too sick to come in. A few hours later his lungs gave out and he couldn’t catch his breath and he died. My mother thought it might be the Spanish flu, which is a terrible thing in those parts. One time it took nearly half of Labrador away in an epidemic.

“After we buried Duncan we set out for Early. We found him a day later and he was almost dead. My mother had her doctor’s bag and she nursed him for two days, but finally he rolled over and died. By that time my mother had figured out it might be something to do with the water they were drinking, because the lake had a pink cast to it. People always used to say the army had dumped some chemicals up there years before and a few Eskimo and Indians had died from unknown causes, but no one ever did anything about it. My father told the Department of Lands and Forest but that was about it.

“After we buried Early we went on up to Joe Poquet’s place, an old trapper who had a cabin by the head of the lake. When we found him he was lying on his bunk and he had been dead quite a while, because half his face was eaten away by weasels. Joe had written something on a piece of paper:
To the Finder. Everything I have is yours. Soon I’m a dead man.
We buried Joe as soon as we could, just wanting to get away from that place, and as we were about to pull out a seaplane banked in over the lake and came right out of the sun and landed in front of us.

“The first man out of the plane was Wesley. He was up there fishing with some of his Hollywood friends, and they were looking for Joe Poquet to be a guide for them, their other guide having been too much on the booze. They flew us back to the boat and spent a few days with us helping my father get the boat ready, and then they took off for Goose Bay and we sailed down there as well. I met Wesley in St. John’s and one thing led to another and he offered me a job and, after holding out for two months, I took it and flew off to L.A., where I was his secretary before we got married. Although it wasn’t really like that. There were a lot of in-between times, too.”

“I’m sure there’s a way to bank all of that,” A.D. said.

Evelyn withdrew her hand from his. “I don’t want to bank anything. I had been thinking of Joe Poquet and how he looked when he first walked in after a winter’s trapping. He looked like Wesley did before he went into the park.”

A.D. felt her slipping away and tried to pull her back. “Well, sure. Two brothers gone and then dealing with Wesley’s losses. That’s a burn, all right. Now, if it was me doing the song that’s where I’d find my hook, in all that suffering. ‘Oh baby, don’t shut the door / On Labrador / Don’t go away / with nowhere to stay’
. . .
But don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to cop your story. I have plenty of stories. I don’t need yours. I love it. I’d use it. But I don’t need it.”

“That’s good, because you can’t have it.”

A.D. held up his hands in surrender. “Hey. Believe me. I don’t want it. No bad intentions. But just for Wesley, we should be traveling together.”

“We can never travel together.”

A.D. didn’t break stride. “Of course not. We have different deals with Wesley. But we can acknowledge each other’s position.”

“Not even that,” Evelyn said, standing up.

She looked down at him and started to say something, then suddenly turned and left. A.D. made no move to stop her. He’d go one more round with both of them, he thought, and if he came up empty he’d jump off the train and land somewhere else. That was one act he knew how to do.