Memphis Movie (6 page)

“Just the check, please,” he said.

“You're Eric Warberg,” she said.

7.

Eric's cell phone was pregnant with too many messages. He thought it a good idea to return the calls right away. If nothing else it would protect him from the babble in the PT Cruiser.

“Linn Sitler's office.”

“Hi, it's Eric Warberg.”

“Eric, yes, lemme get her.”

Linn Sitler, a woman of infinite energy and generosity, was the head of the Memphis Film Commission.

“Eric, hey.”

“Hey, you called about tonight?”

“I did. Just wanted to make sure you had everything you need, directions, etc.”

“Yes, yes, I think so.”

“Ok.”

“Ok.”

“Eric, listen. Little problem.”

“Shoot.”

“Dan Yumont never checked into his hotel.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah, I—”

“I'll handle it. Thanks.”

“Ok, see you tonight.”

Eric hung up. He put a forbidding finger up to stop Jimbo's anxious question. He next called back Ricky Lime, the still photographer for the movie. Ricky was hired after Bill Eggleston opted out. Eric didn't know Ricky and though he had no reason to not trust him, he didn't trust him.

“Hey, Ricky, it's Eric Warberg.”

“Eric, I think we need to talk.”

“What's up, Ricky?”

“I have to show you something.”

“Can it wait? I'm looking at houses with Jimbo Cole.”

“Um, yes. I guess so. Yes, I guess it can wait. But not long. I—I don't quite know how to proceed from here.”

“Trouble with the locations?”

“No, not exactly.”

Why was everyone so exasperating? Eric thought.

“What—exactly?”

“I have to show you something.”

“You said that.”

“Ok. I can wait.”

“Keep taking pictures, Ricky.”

“I'm not sure I can do that, Eric. I'm—I'm afraid.”

Eric hung up. Jesus.

“How about the place on Audubon?” Jimbo shot out before Eric could begin another call.

“Yes, ok,” Eric said.

There were calls from a couple of the stars. They wanted reassurance. Reassurance that the film was still on. Reassurance that there was money. Reassurance that they had the talent to assay their roles. Reassurance that the Big Earthquake scheduled for Memphis wouldn't hit in the next month or six weeks. Eric spent half an hour making his actors feel okay about the unsophisticated town where they had just arrived.

There was no call from Hope Davis. Eric wanted to call her anyway but didn't.

There was also a call from Eden Forbes, the Arizona moneyman. He had made his money in cattle, which Eric found hilarious, a cowboy entrepreneur. Eric didn't imagine that men still made money from cattle. He pictured John Wayne in
Red River
, driving his herd relentlessly to market, men and weather and Indians be damned. Eden Forbes wanted to get into the motion picture business in the worst way, even if it meant giving money to a director who had produced an expensive flop and was going home to Memphis, Tennessee, to lick his wounds and make his next film.

Eric didn't really want to talk to Eden. He felt like a high-schooler called into the principal's office, even though Eden was such a suck-up that he groveled at the feet of Eric Warberg.

“Hi, Eden.”

“Hey, Buddy. You in Memphis?”

“Yes, Eden.”

“You all got what you need? You got everything you need? Cuz if you don't you need to holler. I don't want this to be a second-rate production. You know that, right?”

“I do, Eden. I appreciate you.” He didn't want to mention to Eden Forbes that Dan Yumont was missing.

“That's my Buddy. Sorry I can't be there at the launch party tonight. Gotta court date here. Trying to shake wife number five so I can marry number six.”

Eric didn't know if this was a joke or not so he tried a tentative laugh, half bark.

“Har har, that's right, Buddy. You stick with that fine woman of yours.”

“Thank you, Eden, I will.”

Eden Forbes, of course, had never met Sandy.

“Eden Forbes says you're a fine woman,” Eric said to Sandy, his next phone call.

“Fuck him,” Sandy said.

“Where are you, dear?” Eric said with an ersatz trill.

“I'm writing. I'm at this picturesque, comfortable habitat writing.”

“Ok,” Eric said. “You wanna meet us later—”

Sandy had hung up.

“This is my favorite,” Jimbo said, pulling into a driveway.

Jesus God, Eric thought. Drive me out of this nightmare.

8.

The search for Dan Yumont had begun that morning. Linn Sitler sent out a team of young filmmaker wannabes who hung around her office. They were instructed to scour the city beginning with the hospitals and police stations and then the bars and sleaze joints. Dan Yumont had been arrested twice before for picking up prostitutes. And once for possession of a firearm without a permit. This was common knowledge, mythopoeic tabloid fodder like Britney Spears occasionally forgetting her panties, or Mel Gibson sometimes turning into Adolf Eichmann when he drinks.

One of the young reconnaissance filmmakers was named Bandy Lyle Most. Word around the city, at the local independent film groups and at the Media Co-op at First Congo Church, was that Bandy Most was the most talented filmmaker to come from Memphis since, well, Eric Warberg. This reputation was based on one short film he made while a student at the University of Memphis. It was called
Madam Sabat's Grave
. Its status was just aborning. For now, Bandy was working at Black Lodge Video. He was known for his arcane recommendations and for pushing Alain Delon movies on lovely young co-eds who thought they wanted to see Mario Bava films instead.

Another member of the search team, at the other end of the achievement spectrum, was a mad young Turk named Hassle Cooley. Most people assumed that the name Hassle came from his
reputation as a pain in the ass, but it was actually his given name and, perhaps, had prefigured its owner's temperament. Hassle was 27 years old and had hung on the fringes of Memphis's fringe film groups for years. He seemed to be at every film showing, at every media event, at every art show opening. He was purported to be working on a “mammoth, truth-telling motherfucker of a film,” loosely based on
Birth of a Nation
. The film was more rumor than full-fledged proposal.

Out into the bright sunshine of Memphis, Tennessee, went our intrepid searchers. They saw much that was of interest, especially in the rent-by-the-hour motels. Hassle Cooley was first on that scene and was trying to claim all the hookers' stories as grist for his mill alone. One hooker, after only a brief chat with Hassle, was heard to say, “If this fucker wants a pop, it's double.”

By late afternoon they had all returned to base. No word of Dan Yumont had they heard. The trail began and ended with the airport search of his bags. Dan Yumont, for all intents and purposes, for now, had vanished.

9.

After Eric and crew had seen the house on Audubon, a nice enough spot but horrible for shooting, with low windows and an almost underground feel to it, they were about to split up and go their separate ways. Eric declared he wanted a lie-down before the party that night.

“Eric, you wanna lie down at my house?” Kimberly asked. “It's quiet there. I won't bother you at all.”

Eric was tempted. He saw it all complete before him, the opening credits, the establishing shot, the story line as it stretched out like a red thread, and the smashing downfall of the leading man, who ends up disgraced, embarrassed, cursed and alone.

“Thanks, Kim, I need to get back to my headquarters.”

Headquarters? God.

“Ok, Baby,” Kimberly said, placing her hand on his forearm. “You know where to find me.”

This was the same woman who for years wouldn't return his phone calls or letters.

Once back in his own digs, having dismissed Jimbo with the admonition to pick him up late—not early—for the festivities that evening, Eric wondered at the silence, the stillness of his temporary home.

“Hon,” he called softly.

The only answer was the susurrus of the overhead fan.

He headed for the bedroom to lie down in the dark. There he found Sandy, asleep, her mouthed cocked open and drooling. On her chest a sheaf of papers.

Eric tiptoed to the bed. He gently extricated the sheets and took them out to the living room.

Once he was seated and his reading glasses nosed, he read:

       
—Good.

       
—Saskia. I've just discovered I like to say your name.

       
—Many people do. It's an odd name, isn't it?

       
—Well, I don't know any others. Saskia. Where does it come from?

       
—Company my father works for.

       
—That's the name of the company?

       
—Yes. Art historians.

       
—A company of art historians? Doing what?

       
—Providing images—art for—heck, you know, I'm not sure I can explain it.

       
—That's ok.

       
—They license images, Jack.

       
—Ok.

       
—Right. What do your parents do, Jack? Are you from here, Jack?

       
—Born in Niagara Falls, New York. My father worked for E. I. DuPont and was transferred to Memphis when I was five. A sort of Southerner. My accent falls somewhere along the highway between New York and Tennessee. An Ohio accent, maybe.

       
—And your mom?

       
—Does your mom work?

       
—She's a college professor.

       
—Huh.

       
—Why?

       
—Mine's a homemaker, through and through. Her generation.

       
—I think my parents are a little younger than yours.

       
—Probably. What does your mother teach?

       
—Russian studies.

       
—Huh.

       
—What were we saying—before the waiter—I had something—

       
—Shiva.

       
—No—oh, half empty. Are you really that downbeat or are you being ironic? This is the age of irony and sometimes I don't always get it. Not that I'm dense. It's—

       
—No, I wasn't being ironic. I don't think. I mean, really, I just think—well, that things are serious, that being serious is a, in a way, positive approach to the world.

       
—And if you're a half-full kind of person? You're not taking things seriously enough?

       
—To be honest, I'm not really a half-empty kind of guy, either. I don't think the glass has ever had a damn drop in it. And, well, I'm not judging, mind you.

       
—Aren't you? Aren't you saying that if you are light-hearted you're not paying attention?

Eric put the pages down. It was good. Sandy was good. He didn't really have to remind himself of this. She had been at the top of her craft for decades now and he was lucky to have her. But, there was the other thing: the love thing, the sex thing. Wasn't it always that way? Respect isn't enough. Amity isn't even enough. There has to be love and there has to be sex.

Eric placed his glasses on top of the papers. He put his head down, not really expecting to fall asleep sitting up, chin on chest,
but he did. He fell fast asleep and immediately slithered into a dream in which he was called up on stage to sing with Booker T. and the MGs and he had neglected to tell everyone that he could not sing. The spotlight hit him—he was expected to sing, because it was all riding on him, because he was in charge, the whole show, the whole enterprise, was resting solely on his ability to sing . . .

He woke up around 6 p.m. His neck hurt like hell. The light was muted, seeping in like syrup under the heavy drapes.