Memphis Movie (31 page)

“Yes, Sweet Lorax.”

“Are we to be sad?”

“No, I don't think so, Sweet.”

“Did the movie do this, my Camel?”

“How do you mean, Dear?”

“Did it enter us and taint us and turn our insides sickly?”

“No, I don't think so. This is nature, the Earth's recycling. That's all.”

“Yes, Smart Camel.”

“The wind that bowed our sails is abating.”

“Yes, Camel.”

“Did you ever see
Little Big Man
, Lorax?”

“A movie?”

“Yes, a wonderful movie from a wonderful book.”

“No, Camel.”

“I guess there will not be a time for us to watch it together.” He had lost the thread of why he was asking about
Little Big Man
.

“Who can say, Camel?”

“True. Now who is wise, my Sweet?”

“Am I, Camel? I am. I am smarter for having known you. And richer. I paint now.”

“Yes, you do. You paint beautiful things.”

“Thank you, Camel.”

“Lorax?”

“Yes, My Parasail.”

“I didn't know death would be so loud. It's deafening.”

“Yes, Camel.”

“Here we go,” Camel said.

And Camel opened his eyes wide, for the last time.

Lorax put her hand to Camel's cheek. It was as warm as Summer. Then she undressed his beautiful body, gently removing all clothing and folding it neatly and putting it on a chair. She looked around the room one more time and smiled at the space that had become hers and she its. She wanted to remember every bit, which was made difficult by the profusion.

Then Lorax climbed onto the bed made catafalque. She positioned her body over Camel's like a winding sheet, belly to belly, arms to arms, legs to legs. And as Camel's soul lifted upward, all 21 grams of it, it passed through Lorax and Lorax evanesced like dew. She was never seen again.

She was never seen again. Eric, after Camel's funeral, made a concerted effort to find the fey lover of the dead poet, but no one knew what had happened to her. One day she arrived and one day she was gone. There was a woman at Camel's funeral, someone named Carla Binnage, someone Eric was sure he was supposed to remember. Carla smiled at Eric. Was it a smile that said, I know something you need to know? Or was it just that recognition thing—yet another fan or critic who knew Eric only from his work?

Camel's house became a shrine of sorts. The garden continued to feed many souls though no one tended it and the house, especially on warm summer evenings, when the cockshut came later and later, was alive with ghosts, if you can accept that awkward wording. Often music was heard coming from it. Some said it was
Déjà Vu.
Some said it was a simple dulcimer tune, “Bonaparte's Retreat,” perhaps.

And when they removed Lorax's large canvases from the house and moved them to David Lusk Gallery, some said they shimmered and changed like a flickering TV reception. Some say those pictures, to this day, continue to change, to roll, to mutate. The gallery won't sell them, though they have been offered the riches of kings.

79.

Dan Yumont didn't care who was helming the picture. He worked well with almost everyone. His talent was rich and deep and he could call it up at any time, for anyone. When he met with Sandy he was all professionalism and passion. Of course he would finish the picture with her. Of course she could do it, he reassured her, though she wasn't seeking reassurance.

She was, however, thinking about Dan's sex scenes, how good he looked for his age, how strong he looked—his body a burnished nut-brown—and how dedicated he was to the craft. She also thought about his magnificent penis. And she began to craft another sex scene in her head . . . .she began to form it as if from clay. How fast it took shape, how right it was for the end of the movie. She could see it all whole. And, perhaps wrongly—who can say?—she began to lay it out for Dan right there in the office.

“I'm just now shaping this,” Sandy told Dan.

“Mm,” Dan said.

“I'm just now seeing it whole, large as life, you know?”

“I do,” Dan said.

“It's growing in my mind, in my hand . . .” Sandy said.

As a rule, Dan lived by no rules, as far as his infamous concupiscence was concerned. He did, however, very rarely fuck his director or producer, though there had been many opportunities.
This time Dan felt it was meet and right. He felt that it was the least he could do for his fledgling megger.

Sandy locked the door to the office.

“On the couch, of course,” she said.

“Of course,” Dan said.

80.

After Eric was fired from
Memphis Movie
he thought he would leave Memphis immediately and for good. But he could not. For one thing, at about the same time he was being told he was axed, a message arrived that Camel Eros had died. He had to stick around at least long enough to see his old pal buried, if they were going to bury him instead of burn him upon a pyre like the old Indian in
Little Big Man
. What made me think that? Eric wondered briefly.

Also, there was Mimsy Borogoves. He had not been able to talk to her for days and now, now that he had been disgraced, finally and irrevocably, he needed her. He needed her wisdom and calm, which seemed to exist in her like some deep, warm spring. She was preternatural, he thought. And he needed her prescience, her ability to see tomorrow as if it were already whole and full of possibility. God, how he needed that now. Her cell phone number was out-of-order. There was no answer at her apartment. He drove by at night and there was no light from the window that he imagined was hers.

So, he moped around inside the spacious Midtown Memphis home the movie company had rented for him. Sandy had cleared out. Eden had told him she was taking over the movie and that seemed right to Eric. He could not feel rancor toward her. He had called her immediately upon finding out.

“So, for you, this is good,” he said.

“Oh, Cabbage, I am sorry. For you it's hell, I think.”

“Yes, thanks,” Eric said.

“What can I do for you? I almost threw this right back in Eden's face. I want you to know that.”

“Of course. But you didn't. And you shouldn't. Breaks come and they should be honored. Gifts from the gods. You deserve this.”

“You're a kind Cabbage.”

“I'm not, not really. I am beaten down. I am an ex-director.”

“You are most decidedly not. You know how these things work. Second chances, rebirths. It's Hollywood's special magic.”

“Not this time. This was my last second chance. I was made to see that.”

“I don't believe that.”

“Well, whatever. For you, Sweetheart, I only wish good things. Finish this movie. It was yours anyway, made mostly of your smart and bright words.”

“I will, Cabbage. I will finish it for you.”

“For yourself,” Eric shot back, perhaps too sharply.

“Yes,” Sandy said. “That too.”

“Only one thing still rankles.”

“Only one?”

“Ok, not only one, but one in particular. I'd like to find out who leaked our inner secrets to that fucker Apenail. That's what started this unfavorable denouement.”

Sandy swallowed. “Yes,” she managed.

“What's the difference, right? It's over for me. Rightly so. It was a mess from the beginning. I am a mess. I have no idea how to direct a picture.”

There was silence, silence from Sandy, his biggest supporter, his love.

“Eric, listen, sorry, I've got another call and I have to take it,” she said finally. Her distraction was like a hot knife.

“Right,” he said, but she had already disconnected.

So, he haunted the big house by himself, Sandy gone, Mimsy missing, his father finally, ultimately, for the last time gone gone gone.

After a few days, after Camel's funeral, Eric grew desperate to find Mimsy. He had to wait through a long weekend to call Linn Sitler's office.

“Hi, it's Eric Warberg,” he said.

Did he imagine a hesitation, as if the receptionist had been warned he might call?

“Mimsy Borogoves, please,” he said, quickly.

The woman laughed. “That's very funny, Mr. Warberg. Um, look, Linn isn't here.”

“No, seriously, this is not about the movie. I don't need Linn. I mean, tell her I love her and thank her, but, really, I need to talk to Mimsy.”

“Is this a riff, some kind of movieland joke?”

“I'm not sure I follow you,” Eric said. “Mimsy Borogoves. I know it's an absurd name. But it is her name and I know she works for Linn.”

“There's no one here by that name,” the receptionist said. She managed to keep some sunshine in her voice, almost blotted out by a now creeping concern.

“Mimsy,” Eric said. “There's no Mimsy there.”

“N-no, sorry.”

Eric didn't know where to go with this. Hadn't Mimsy told him she worked for Linn Sitler? Now Eric wasn't sure.

“Then lemme talk to Linn, I guess.”

“She—she's busy, I'm afraid. She's had Spike Lee on the phone all morning. Can you imagine? We think he's gonna do a film about Dr. King.”

Eric could imagine. He could imagine anything about the movies. Their capacity to conjure magic was unchecked and boundless. What he could not imagine was why they were hiding Mimsy Borogoves from him. He hung up.

To whom could he turn to find Mimsy? Who knew her? Who saw them together?

This last construction gave him great pause. Who saw them together? Wait. He was not honestly thinking that she was a child of snow, a fever-dream? He knew her, her creamy skin, her pale eyes, her laugh. Her laugh was a thing of rare production. Her laugh could turn him inside out.

He went to her apartment building. He went to her floor and knocked on the door. He pounded on the door. He found the super of the building.

“Hi, sorry,” Eric said, hustling over to the busy man. “I needed to find Mimsy, Mimsy Borogoves. She lives in 738.”

The man looked him up and down. He recognized a non-Memphian, Eric was sure. The clothes were a giveaway.

“No one in 738. Haven't rented it in a year.”

“W-why?” Eric said. It wasn't really what he wanted to ask.

“Accident in there. Still a mess.”

“What kind of accident?” Eric said.

The man now was growing suspicious. He shook his head and tried to move away.

“Wait, please,” Eric said, grabbing the man's arm. “When—when was the accident?”

“Year ago, I think.” he said. He looked at Eric's hand on his arm and Eric removed it. “Gotta get back to work now, Pal. No one in there, ok?”

“Ok,” Eric said, weakly.

Eric called numerous people from the movie. Jimbo Cole—his
old running buddy, the ludicrous Jimbo Cole—wouldn't take his call. He found a number in his book in a woman's handwriting for someone named Bandy Lyle Most. This Bandy Lyle Most informed Eric that he had just gotten a deal with Dreamworks for his first film and didn't really have time to talk.

Eric made a damn fool of himself quizzing each and every cast member about his lost love. Hassle Cooley—even Hassle Cooley denied all knowledge of her. He did take the opportunity, Hassle did, to tell Eric of one more project he was sure Eric would be interested in—to be called
It's a Horrible Life
—about a guy who is given a glimpse of the world without him and discovers that it's a much better place. The devil shows him it would be a better place without him.

He called Rica, good Rica. What he got from him was a theory of metaphysics.

“Here's what I think happened,” Rica said. “Here, in Memphis, perhaps through us, perhaps through our coming here, for whatever reason, there has occurred a breach into the otherworld. The thin membrane that separates life from—whatever else is not life—has ruptured, oh so slightly, right here, where we are working. Now, we can ask why, we can wonder at the wonder of finding ourselves up to our third eyes in otherness, but that's fruitless. Instead, we need to listen, to pay attention, to let the dreamspace inhabit us or let ourselves inhabit it. Does that make sense to you? That it's ours, this rupture, this bleeding through, it is somehow
ours
?”

No one had seen her. No one knew anyone named Mimsy Borogoves. He called Hope. Surely Hope would not desert him now.

“Hello, Eric, dear,” she said.

“Hope, thank God,” Eric said. Even to himself he sounded reckless. He took a deep breath. “Hope, you remember Mimsy
Borogoves, don't you? Beautiful woman who worked for Linn Sitler's office. She and I—” He didn't finish the thought.