Memphis Movie (13 page)

“Have you written more? Gotten any closer to a denouement? Is this movie gonna have an ending?”

“It will, Cabbage. It will end when and how it's supposed to.”

“Ok, Sweet. I got a call here from Camel, I see. I'm betting we're gonna have to go elsewhere for our local funk. At short notice I don't really know which direction to go. I'll worry about it tomorrow.”

“Ok, Scarlett.”

“Ok—” Eric heard hesitation.

“Oh, and Cabbage.”

“Yes, Sweet.”

“I love you,” Sandy said.

“I love you, too, Baby.”

Eric called Camel and that stray picked up. Her name? Lorraine?

“Hey,” her sleepy voice said. “This is Camel's house but this isn't Camel.”

“Hi, this is Eric Warberg. Is Camel available?”

“Hi, Eric, it's Lorax.”

Lorax. Right.

“Hi, can you put Camel on?”

There was a snuffling laughter coming through now. The sound a puppy might make wagging its tail in a silk dressing gown.

“Lorax?” Eric said eventually.

“I'm not putting Camel on,” she said, giggling.

“I don't—” Then Eric saw the joke. “Oh, ha, yes, I'm sure you wouldn't. Ahem, can you give Camel the phone?”

There was a sort of silence. He could hear music. He thought it was the Doors.

“Hey, Eric,” Camel said.

“Hey, Camel. Am I disturbing you?”

“No, no, man, I'm in the bathroom.”

“I'm sorry,” Eric said. He hated disgusting images. They played havoc with his personal well-being. They played hell with his visual dictionary, the library he kept in his head of useful, meaningful images, from which his movies came. Also, he didn't trust his body and hated imagining anyone else's personal eructation and necessaries.

“No, I'm not, you know, number twoing or anything. At least I don't think I am. I am—”

Again that soft-edged silence.

“I sit in here to write. That is, I used to. So, I thought if I was gonna write again, I should try it in here. It's quite a happy space, you know? The colors are nice, the chrome of the pipes, the smell of recently used soap.”

“Listen, Camel, if this is too much for you—”

“
Movie Man
,” Camel said with a sense of urgency. It brought Eric up short. He prepared himself for something from left of left field.

“I've written you some damn good dialogue.”

“Camel, that's wonderful.”

“Can you gimme a few hours? I'm thinking I can write all night here and have something near to what you're looking for.”

This was so unexpected Eric didn't know what to say. Camel lucid was the Camel of old, creative, energetic, amusing. Eric's gratitude made him feel blubbery, blurry at the edges.

“Camel, you're a prize. We'll talk tomorrow.”

“Ok, Craig.”

Eric called Mimsy Borogoves. She whispered whispery endearments. He invited her to the 7 a.m. shoot at the Pyramid and she said that she would be there.

He talked to Rica Sash, who assured him that he had a visual style that Eric was going to love. “Yes,” he said, “I can work with your photographer's images.”

Eric took a call from Ike Bana and one from Suze Everingham. Both only wanted assurances that the movie would begin shooting tomorrow. Not having ever worked with either actor before, Eric was a little on edge. He felt challenged somehow by Ike's aggressive manner. Did he have to assert so early that he was in charge?

Suze Everingham, however, sounded warm and friendly. She was about to break big this year, with two already acclaimed independent films being released just about simultaneously. There was already Oscar buzz about her. Eric only knew that she was as sexy as a flame. She was bicycling, Eric knew, shooting a movie with Miranda July simultaneously with his.

Suze Everingham had a funny/sexy persona on screen, a blonde Sarah Silverman, with that same kind of killer body. Eric was anxious to work with her and the part Sandy had written her was key, a real plum role. “This part,” Sandy had said, “this is our Independent Spirit Award for Supporting Actress.”

Eric had no call from Dan Yumont so he checked in with his wayward star.

The phone rang a dozen times. The rings sounded tired.

“Go,” Dan said when he picked up.

“Hey, Dan. Just wanted to make sure you had everything you needed. You need a wake-up call, a limo in the morning?”

“Eric!” Dan howled. He sounded coked to the gills. Maybe even
beyond the gills. “Man, I'll be there. I'm gonna walk, Buddy. Shit, the Peabody is in the Pyramid's backyard.”

Eric didn't like the sound of this. It was walkable, of course, but he didn't think it was safe to have his star on the street. Maybe at 7 a.m. it would be ok.

“Ok,” Eric said. “You did check into your room, then?”

“Not yet, my man. I am about to. I might need to crash early.”

“Ok. Um, where are you? Do you need someone to come get you?”

Dan Yumont didn't rightly know where he was. Somewhere near the college.

“See you in the a.m.,” he sang out.

“Ok, Dan,” Eric said.

He had a bad feeling about Dan Yumont. The insurance policy on him was a pain, an expense that Eden Forbes balked at initially. Then relented. Eden Forbes knew Dan Yumont was the ticket, the money. The policy stipulated daily drug tests. Eric hoped they didn't follow through on that.

29.

Eric was nervous about meeting with Hope Davis. He felt as if he were dressing for a date, as if he were a high school swain with a crush on a cheerleader. Luckily, Sandy had vacated the premises prior to Eric's preparations. God knows where she went.

She missed him putting baby powder in his underwear. She missed the extra deodorant, a swipe down his sternum to his pubes. She missed the cherry Binaca.

“Goddamn fool,” Eric said to the mirror. He wore a T-shirt that read,
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE ADVERTISED ON T-SHIRTS
. And an expensive sport coat. Urban chic.

When he knocked on the door to Hope's suite, his heart answered the brief tattoo of his fist. She opened right away and Eric was caught in mid–deep breath.

“H-hi,” he managed.

“Come in,” she said, stepping gracefully back. Her face, so luminous on the screen, was more luminous in real life.

Who builds his Hope in the air of your faire looks, lives like a drunken sailor on a mast.

“I can't believe we've never worked together. Never even crossed paths,” Eric said, entering.

“I know, isn't that strange? And we're both so—Hollywood?” She tinkled a laugh. It was golden.

“Yes,” Eric said.

“I loved
Spondulicks
, by the way,” Hope Davis said.

“Oh, Christ. Only you.” Eric groaned.

“No, no, the smart people loved it. The smart people are disappearing.”

“Yes,” Eric said, uncertainly. He thought it best to sit down and dropped into one of the stiff but elegant chairs in the room.

“Let's sit over here, can we?” Hope said, gesturing toward a table, on which sat her script.

“Right,” Eric said. He groaned, standing. His back spoke harshly to his head.

“Do you want something,” Hope Davis asked, “from the bar?”

“Yes,” Eric said. “Uh, gin and tonic?”

“Right. I'll join you.”

Once he was seated at the table, so near her, Eric's face burned. He sipped the drink, which hit his cortex like a jolt of moonshine. He smiled with half his mouth. God, she's beautiful, he thought.

“So, my scenes,” Hope Davis said.

Eric swallowed hard. Oh no. She hates the script. She hates the part. Why did she take it? Sandy will die if she hates the words. Why didn't I make sure Sandy came?

“Yes,” Eric said.

“I
love
them,” Hope Davis said.

Music rises. Cymbals clash. There is balm in Gilead. There is Hope!

“Wonderful,” Eric said. He took a longer sip of his drink. It burned like school.

“I'm having a stumble, though, in my scene with Paul.” She smiled, sweetly.

Who the hell is Paul? Eric thought. Was he an actor that Eden had hired without telling him? Was Eric supposed to know Paul?
Had they ever worked together, dined together? Oh, God, Paul is someone large, someone Eric, if he knew half of what his work was about, would know immediately and thoroughly.

“You know, Dan's character,” Hope Davis continued. “The scene where Dan and I go to the adoption agency and he has to answer for his past, for his drug use. That is a sticking point with me. It's a powerful scene, pivotal I'd say. I'm having a hard time—I guess, with Dan's
involvement
.”

“I'm not sure I follow,” Eric said. He was lost. Had he missed a meeting? Was this movie going on without him while he was left at the starting gate?

“I just don't see Dan playing this, I guess is what I'm saying.”

“Ah,” Eric said, stalling. “You—you've never worked with him.”

“Oh, I love Dan. Yes, we've done two films together. You
know
,
Meanwhile in Love
? He is wonderful. What I am asking is, will he say these lines? I'm betting not. You know he's a notorious ad-libber, rewriting his lines at will?”

“Yes, I know. This is something Sandy and I have discussed. It'll be fine. But you—you're lost as to what is going to happen here if Dan goes off on his own?”

“Yes, I guess that's a good way of putting it.”

The meeting went a little smoother after this.

Eric almost relaxed. They ran lines for a while, Eric, who was no actor, feeding her Dan's lines, sometimes giving her a couple of options, a couple of
maybe
lines, some ways Dan Yumont might take his character.

They drank a bit more. Once Hope Davis laid her hand on Eric's arm. It was what the character might have done. Yet it hit Eric like the spark Prometheus stole. He wanted her to do it again, he wanted her to do it forever, but the gesture was never repeated.

He tried to keep his mind on his movie. His movie. Hope Davis was so committed, so professional. He thought that she could see
that he was faking it, going through the motions. Perhaps not; perhaps it was only his personal mistrust.

At the end of the evening, he kissed Hope Davis on the cheek.

“Tomorrow will be grand,” she said. Was this to comfort him? Did he seem at sea to her, in need of rescuing?

“Yes,” he answered.

All the way back to his house his lips were numb as if he had ingested alum.

He recalled a line he had read once but could not remember where: “Hope has left you like a painted dream.”

I have a lot of tics and phobias. I hate to travel. I hate to go to festivals. I hate it when somebody gets close behind me. I'm scared of the darkness. I hate open doors.

—Ingmar Bergman

30.

There was one long table, where kings of ancient civilizations might have held their summits, a coarse, wooden monstrosity surrounded by folding chairs like suckling pups. Eric sat at one end of it, Sandy just to his right. It was early in the morning and there were a lot of groans and a lot of jokes about coffee.

Here it is, Eric thought as he surveyed the table. Here is my movie.

Even saying it he didn't believe it. Didn't believe it was his. Didn't believe it would ever get made. It had been a rough road getting here.

The missing chair just next to Sandy's was Dan Yumont's. The places weren't marked but it was left empty anyway, in deference to him, the wayward star.

Eric rose reluctantly.

He had no prepared words. These read-throughs—how many had he managed in his long career? They were tiresome, being the first step, the baby step before the movie learned how to walk, much less dance.

“It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that we are about to begin the long and arduous process of dragging this movie into the light.”

There were smiles. He was being breezy, he thought. Perhaps breezy was beyond him. Perhaps it was behind him.

“Ok, so Dan's not here yet. I'll read for him. Any questions before we begin? I've talked to all of you individually so you know the score here. The script is almost finished. If it seems that we're on a road to nowhere, fret not. Sandy has written some pages that are shimmeringly beautiful. And, many of you may already know this: we've hired Camel Eros, the famous beat poet, to punch up the story, to add Memphis Mojo. His blues—that is, his blue sheets, should be with us in the coming days.”