Authors: David Gilbert
9.48 P.M. Last Tuesday.
"I love you."
"What?"
Saul looks down at her. They've barely begun. He's just slid inside of her and she's just done this thing with her legs, a
thing he'd never seen or even thought about before, and a light—who knows where it comes from but it's magical: big fat atoms
of light buzzing around like fireflies—seems to flow from her face, her skin, pores popping with paparazzi flare. Man-oh-man,
it's head-rushing fireworks, and he says it again. "I love you."
She stops moving. "You love me?"
Saul pauses, thinks for a second (Does this mean divorce? Is this binding? Is this a bad thing to say?) and maintains his
claim with a stout "Yes."
"You barely know me."
"True."
"Okay," she says, "you love me." And she turns him around with some sort of wrestling move and boom! she's on top of him and
she's stretching backward and reaching behind to cradle his balls . . . whoops, not the balls, the asshole, her index finger
circling the puckered ring. This is new to Saul, that area strictly off limits in matters sexual, even though his wife is
European and he's heard things. But assholes, bungs, rectums, poopers, anuses (what is the right word? they all sound awful)
have never entered his realm of bedroom activities. What if you like it too much? What does that mean? Do you suddenly have
to reevaluate who you are? I mean, of course not, you're straight and that's never been one of the issues you've lumbered
under, but still, this was feeling good, and yow! she eases her index finger into you, stopping at the first knuckle. Instinctively,
your back arches up (it just does) and she pinches her knees against your ribs. Is this fun? It's hard to tell. To say this
is the first time Saul has cheated on his wife would be a lie. But he's a decent husband, and besides, he's answered quite
a few phone calls from mysterious men claiming to have the wrong number. Such things happen in life, small affairs for one
night, possibly two, once for a month. But this is the first time he's professed love. Why? Who knows? But sometimes you're
falling, twisting from the ninth floor, a real Dar Robinson stunt, and while you struggle through the air like a moth caught
in a pool, you hope love will inflate some airy pillow. Does that make sense? Saul isn't sure, but since this woman has her
finger up his ass, he says it again.
"You are so beautiful. I really think I love you."
She stares up toward the ceiling, exposing a scar along the bone of her chin. An accident as a kid? An abusive boyfriend?
Passing out in a bathroom? Saul wants to ask but she's crunching through a workout, her face bundled with concentration. She
eases her finger to the second knuckle. Saul feels a slight burning in a previously unknown spot. And he thinks: Is this going
to make me poop? Childhood suppositories dance in his head, memories of his mother chasing him around the Brooklyn apartment
while he dodged her in constipated despair.
"Do it to me," she says.
"What?"
"Finger me."
"Huh?"
"My asshole." She stops moving long enough for Saul to satisfy her request. He finds the place in question and fulfills the
desire. (He can't believe he's doing this.) It makes her shudder and she starts to rock with a brand-new vigor. "This kills
me," she says.
"I love you."
"I'm going to come."
It must've been a four-minute performance, or at least close to it, and square in the middle of this gargantuan orgasm she
withdraws her finger from Saul (my God! that leaves you with a sense of emptiness and regret) and starts feeling her own breasts—pinch
pinch pinch—and this really puts her over the edge because she then throws herself backward and breaks Saul's finger.
11:50 A.M. Thursday again.
You shut your finger in the car door, that's your story. It was late and you were tired and you crawled into the front seat
of the Porsche and whammo! blinding pain. The doctor bought it. So did the wife. Missy kissed the splint to make it better.
But Saul wonders if the story holds water. I mean, can you really close your middle finger in a car door? Sure, if you try.
But by accident? No way. Not just one finger. But nobody questioned him and this made Saul question everything. Easy alibis
swirled within the worst injuries, lies transformed by agony.
The assistant turns on the TV and eases back toward Saul's desk, coyly leaning against the corner. Of course there are a couple
of scenes left out of last Tuesday's encounter. On the cutting-room floor, you might say. There's the assistant's misreading
Saul's cries of pain for cries of pleasure. It's a classic case of comedic misunderstanding, almost farcical. Imagine his
screams—
Ahhhh!
or something along those lines—and her excited grinding—
Oh,
yes, harder!
or words to that effect—and then, in a flash of resignation, he passes out. And after that there's the ride to the emergency
room, the bandaging of the finger, the constant throbbing, but such images Saul would rather forget. The uncontrollable tears,
the screaming, the nurse's coldness, the lonely drive home. Some people are not made to suffer; they are the first to die
in hardship.
The assistant says, "You ready?"
Saul nods.
She pushes a button on the remote control and the screen flickers to two men, well-known film critics, one fat and one thin,
their names dependent on each other as Abbott is dependent on Costello (unidentified here for reasons liable). Saul leans
forward. Certainly, he's feeling tension, in the stomach, the lower half. Success is not a word recently associated with this
man, though successes had popped up in his past, nice successes, well-regarded by the critics, nicely attended by the public,
successes that had been nominated for awards but didn't win. But his last success was six years ago and it was barely a success.
Since then, duds, four duds in a row, and now, with this newest release, all signs prophesize a big disaster. The endless
test screenings pointed to elements too large to fix:
The bad teeth are distracting! Such fake snow!
Does it have to be so depressing? Why would I ever pay money to sit through
this?!
I guess when you get down to it, a movie about the Donner Party isn't such a hot idea. Flesh-eating only works in horror flicks.
And these days everyone is cynical about earnestness. (There was laughter in one screening when an exiled John Reed proclaimed
to his family, "We will be together, I promise you. We will be together someday. Please remember that.") But the director
was A-list, the screenwriter first-rate, the actors well-respected (one of them a teen idol searching for legitimacy), and
Saul had secured a healthy budget from the studio. Problem was the budget didn't take into effect a freakishly warm winter,
a broken leg, union troubles, Native American protests, an addicted director of photography, and the crews' proximity to Reno.
The budget swelled the same way a cartoon snowball rolling down a hill swells into a deadly boulder sucking up everything
in its path. But right now a possible triumph might be snatched from the jaws of bad buzz, cinematic fate determined by a
thumbs-up or a thumbs-down from these emperors of public taste.
With a push of a button the fat one and the thin one jerk from fast forward into real time. "Here we go," the assistant says.
11:57 A.M. Thursday.
They hated it. Two thumbs down, way down, to China down, the China Syndrome of bad movies, down, down, down until clear through
to the other side of awful. The fat one actually called it "How the West Was Eaten." That's a bit harsh, isn't it? You can
have an opinion but you don't have to be nasty about it. But do you know what really hurts? It's that Saul's just as gawky
as these two film nerds: balding in an undignified manner, bad skin, an inability to catch or throw or hit. In high school
he probably would've been friends with these guys, skipping class to go to movies, sitting toward the front so as not to see
the couples making out during
Spartacus.
So this seems a betrayal of the worst kind, the brotherhood of awkward men destroyed for showbiz's sake. Why the abuse? Are
we not mensches? Saul, never much of a student of the Torah, just quick with a Yiddish word or phrase, sits there and remembers
celebrating Yom Kippur with his family, back in Canarsie, on Remsen Ave. He'd have to accept the apologies of the stronger
boys who tormented him throughout the year, his father forcing forgiveness with a full heart, and twenty-five hours later,
after the single note of the shofar, the regularly scheduled abuse would begin all over again. And then there was the fasting
between the bookends of sundown, Saul sneaking food in the bathroom, Ziplocked cookies hidden in the toilet tank while the
stories of the oral tradition were told. The sacrificing of the goats comes to mind: the one goat offered at the altar, the
other goat released into the wilderness: "And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over
him all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins; and he shall put them upon the
head of the goat, and send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness." Funny what can pop into
your head, thoughts with long beards and awful smells, draped in black, Hasidic simplicity now garbed in Hollywood cool.
The assistant stops the tape. The TV screen skips onto the color of a clear video sky. "Well," she says, drumming the remote
against her thigh. "That doesn't really mean a thing. Look down the list of yearly top tens and you'll see thumbs down on
more than half
Saul nods.
"It'll open big."
And before she leaves, pausing at the door, her body half in and half out, hand flicking the doorknob so that the latch makes
mechanical clicks, she asks, "Oh, how's your finger, by the way?" And she smiles—with playfulness or with ridicule, who can
tell with a woman like that?
1:17 P.M. Thursday.
Saul sneaks out of the building. The fresh air doesn't feel so fresh or even much like air; it's more like breathing through
a mixture of cotton candy and insulation. The people he recognizes
give
him pained smiles pretending that failure, in the grand scheme, isn't much of a tragedy. For example, you could lose a loved
one. And at least you have your health. But screw that, you'd take cancer right now, HIV, a terrible maiming collision. At
this moment, you'd gladly collapse on the caskets of your wife and daughter. Just give me grosses! You can be a martyr—in
fact, personal calamity would probably be good for you, a test of the human spirit—but professional ruin is not a role you
want to be cast in. It all comes down to being active and passive (this is what your shrink says). You can't control misfortune,
so there's a certain freedom to luxuriate in it. But the rest is a cowbell of responsibility: every time you move, you clatter.
The high-pitched tweet of a car alarm—bee-boop!—and Saul is in his Porsche and Saul is out the gate and Saul is going east.
He leans back into the traffic and does what little steering he has to with his knees. Above him, a pigeon flies—circling?
do pigeons circle?—while the midday light hits its wings with vulturous foreboding. Even birds act.
6:15 A.M. Friday. Right now.
The sun is rising to the left with the syrupy promise of Little Orphan Annie to bet your bottom dollar. (What was John Huston
thinking, but at least he had emphysema as an excuse.) Saul, infinitely tired, drives twenty miles with each blink of his
lids. Whoa! what happened there? A brief moment on the rumble strips, the sensation similar to a 5.3 on the Richter scale,
and Saul is awake and gripping the steering wheel and jerking back into the middle of the road. That can give you a small
heart attack. Luckily, the traffic is sparse. No one is out at this hour. Saul grabs the two-gallon bottle of Coke and takes
a long sip. Disgusting. Warm and flat, the landscape's equivalent in carbonate. Where are the mountains anyway? Shouldn't
this be the opening shot of
Bonanza?
After Monida Pass, you enter Montana—The Last Best Place, Big Sky Country. Friends in Saul's business are buying ranches here
left and right, sprinkling the sage with glitter. Property is no longer discussed in three-to-five-acre plots, swimming pools
and tennis courts, ocean views. Now it's the lingo of spreads, ten thousand acres, five hundred head of cattle, a lake, a
river, a mountain. Rugged individualism is held within land, and real estate agents can get it for you cheap. Just plop down
a couple of million and you're a new pioneer with manifest destiny.
Saul perks up a bit. He's done it. This was the goal. Montana by car. Sixteen hours ago it actually made sense, but like much
impetuous behavior, it's in jeopardy of turning foolish. So where do you go now? The wing-and-a-prayer structure is showing
signs of a weak third act. Nothing worse. You can't leave them bored, checking their watches, scraping the bottom of the popcorn
barrel. That kills word of mouth. Always better to end with a bang. The test audience that sits in Saul's synapticplex wonders
if there's a point to this journey.
Too aimless, not much action.
Hell, they can't even decide if the protagonist is a sympathetic character.
An
adulterous movie producer. A rich Hollywood Jew. A self-involved egoist.
He's simply not likable, not interesting, not good entertainment value, not worth the price of admission. And what can you
do to save yourself? Nothing. No reedits. No reshoots. Just rush it straight to video and hope nobody notices. Saul feels
the unique tingle of an anxiety attack—it starts with prickly flashes, like being beamed up in
Star Trek,
except the
Enterprise
is cold and empty and boldly going nowhere.
Up ahead, the emerald of a road sign—"Dillon, 75 miles"—and the first thing that pops into mind is the actor Matt Dillon playing
the lawman Matt Dillon in a movie adapted from the TV show. This high concept puts Saul at ease, temporarily.
Out of the blue and with soundless pursuit, the flashing red of a Montana State Trooper appears in the Porsche's rearview
mirror. Saul, exhausted yet determined, doesn't notice the approaching lights—he only has nine more miles left until Dillon,
then he'll stop and have breakfast and maybe take a nap and think about things. "Reevaluate" is the word he's looking for,
but at this moment he can't find any word over three syllables long.