Run With the Hunted (62 page)

“Well, just stop running around with your pussy dangling.”

“You pig!”

She ran up the stairway, plop, plop, plop. Big ass. A door slammed somewhere. I didn't follow it up. A totally over-rated commodity.

That night when Tully came home she packed me off to Catalina for a week. I think she knew Nadine was in heat.

That wasn't in the film. You can't put everything in a film.

And then back in the screening room, the film was over. There was applause. We all walked around shaking each other's hands, hugging. We were all great, hell yes.

Then Harry Friedman found me. We hugged, then shook hands.

“Harry,” I said, “you've got a winner.”

“Yes, yes, a great screenplay! Listen, I heard you've done a novel about prostitutes!”

“Yes.”

“I want you to write me a screenplay about that. I want to do it!”

“Sure, Harry, sure …”

Then he saw Francine Bowers and rushed toward her. “Francine, honey doll, you were magnificent!”

Gradually things wound down and the room was almost empty. Sarah and I walked outside.

Lance Edwards and his car were gone. We had the long walk back to our car. It was all right. The night was cool and clear. The movie was finished and would soon be showing. The critics would have their say. I knew that too many movies were made, one after the other after the other. The public saw so many movies that they no longer knew what a movie was and the critics were in the same fix.

Then we were in the car driving back.

“I liked it,” said Sarah, “only there were parts …”

“I know. It's not an immortal movie but it's a good one.”

“Yes, it is …”

Then we were on the freeway.

“I'll be glad to see the cats,” said Sarah.

“Me too …”

“You going to write another screenplay?”

“I hope not …”

“Harry Friedman wants us to come to Cannes, Hank.”

“What? And leave the cats?”

“He said to bring the cats.”

“No way!”

“That's what I told him.”

It had been a good night and there would be others. I cut into the fast lane and went for it.

—
H
OLLYWOOD

I am sitting on a tin chair outside the x-ray lab as

death, on stinking wings, wafts through the

halls forevermore.

I remember the hospital stenches from when

I was a boy and when I was a man and now

as an old man

I sit in my tin chair waiting.

then an orderly

a young man of 23 or 24

pushes in a piece of equipment.

it looks like a hamper of

freshly done laundry

but I can't be sure.

the orderly is awkward.

he is not deformed

but his legs work

in an unruly fashion

as if disassociated from the

motor workings of the brain.

he is in blue, dressed all in blue,

pushing,

pushing his load.

ungainly little boy blue.

then he turns his head and yells at

the receptionist at the x-ray window:

“anybody wants me, I'll be in 76

for about 20 minutes!”

his face reddens as he yells,

his mouth forms a down

turned crescent like a

pumpkin's halloween mouth.

then he's gone into some doorway,

probably 76.

not a very
prepossessing
chap.

lost as a human,

long gone down some

numbing road.

but

he's healthy

he's healthy.

HE'S HEALTHY!

washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook

out again

I write from the bed

as I did last

year.

will see the doctor,

Monday.

“yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-

aches and my back

hurts.”

“are you drinking?” he will ask.

“are you getting your

exercise, your

vitamins?”

I think that I am just ill

with life, the same stale yet

fluctuating

factors.

even at the track

I watch the horses run by

and it seems

meaningless.

I leave early after buying tickets on the

remaining races.

“taking off?” asks the mutuel

clerk.

“yes, it's boring,”

I tell him.

“if you think it's boring

out there,” he tells me, “you oughta be

back here.”

so here I am

propped against my pillows

again

just an old guy

just an old writer

with a yellow

notebook.

something is

walking across the

floor

toward

me.

oh, it's just

my cat

this

time.

being very ill and very weak is a very strange

thing.

when it takes all your strength to get from the

bedroom to the bathroom and back, it seems like

a joke but

you don't laugh.

back in bed you consider death again and find

the same thing: the closer you get to it

the less forbidding it

becomes.

you have much time to examine the walls

and outside

birds on a telephone wire take on much

importance.

and there's the tv: men playing baseball

day after day.

no appetite.

food tastes like cardboard, it makes you

ill, more than

ill.

the good wife keeps insisting that you

eat.

“the doctor said …”

poor dear.

and the cats.

the cats jump up on the bed and look at me.

they stare, then jump

off.

what a world, you think: eat, work, fuck,

die.

luckily I have a contagious disease: no

visitors.

the scale reads 155, down from

217.

I look like a man in a death camp.

I

am.

still, I'm lucky: I feast on solitude, I

will never miss the crowd.

I could read the great books but the great books don't

interest me.

I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go

one way or the

other.

just like everybody

else.

from my bed

I watch

3 birds

on a telephone

wire.

one flies

off.

then

another.

one is left,

then

it too

is gone.

my typewriter is

tombstone

still.

and I am

reduced to bird

watching.

just thought I'd

let you

know,

fucker.

Harry walked down the steps and into the garden. Many of the patients were out there. He had been told that his wife, Gloria, was out there. He saw her sitting alone at a table. He approached her obliquely, from one side and a bit from the rear. He circled the table and sat down across from her. Gloria sat very straight, she was very pale. She looked at him but didn't see him. Then she saw him.

“Are you the conductor?” she asked.

“The conductor of what?”

“The conductor of verisimilitude?”

“No, I'm not.”

She was pale., her eyes were pale, pale blue.

“How do you feel, Gloria?”

It was an iron table, painted white, a table that would last for centuries. There was a small bowl of flowers in the center, wilted dead flowers hanging from sad, limp stems.

“You are a whore-fucker, Harry. You fuck whores.”

“That's not true, Gloria.”

“Do they suck you too? Do they suck your dick?”

“I was going to bring your mother, Gloria, but she was down with the flu.”

“That old bat is always down with something.... Are you the conductor?”

The other patients sat at tables or stood up against the trees or were stretched out on the lawn. They were motionless and silent.

“How's the food here, Gloria? Do you have any friends?”

“Terrible. And no. Whore-fucker.”

“Do you want something to read? What can I bring you to read?”

Gloria didn't answer. Then she brought her right hand up, looked at it, clenched it into a fist and punched herself squarely in the nose, hard. Harry reached across and held both of her hands. “Gloria,
please!
”

She began to cry. “Why didn't you bring me any
chocolates?
”

“Gloria, you told me you
hated
chocolates.”

Her tears rolled down profusely. “I
don't
hate chocolates! I
love
chocolates!”

“Don't cry, Gloria, please … I'll bring you chocolates, anything you want.... Listen, I've rented a motel room a couple blocks away, just to be near you.”

Her pale eyes widened. “A
motel
room? You're there with some fucking whore! You watch x-rated movies together, there's a full-length mirror on the ceiling!”

“I'll be nearby for a couple of days, Gloria,” Harry said soothingly. “I'll bring you anything you want.”

“
Bring me your love, then,
” she screamed. “
Why the hell don't you bring me your love?
”

A few of the patients turned and looked.

“Gloria, I'm sure that there is nobody who cares for you more than I do.”

“You want to bring me chocolates? Well, jam those chocolates up your ass!”

Harry took a card out of his wallet. It was from the motel. He handed it to her.

“I just want to give you this before I forget. Are you allowed to phone out? Just phone me if you want anything at all.”

Gloria didn't answer. She took the card and folded it into a small square. Then she bent down, took off one of her shoes, put the card in the shoe and put the shoe back on.

Then Harry saw Dr. Jensen approaching across the lawn. Dr. Jensen walked up smiling and saying, “Well, well, well....”

“Hello, Dr. Jensen.” Gloria spoke without emotion.

“May I sit down?” the doctor asked.

“Surely,” said Gloria.

The doctor was a heavy man. He reeked of weight and responsibility and authority. His eyebrows looked thick and heavy, they
were
thick and heavy. They wanted to slide down into his wet circular mouth and vanish but life wouldn't let them.

The doctor looked at Gloria. The doctor looked at Harry. “Well, well, well,” he said. “I'm really
pleased
with the progress we've made so far....”

“Yes, Dr. Jensen, I was just telling Harry how much more
stable
I felt, how much the consultations and the group sessions have helped. I've lost so much of my unreasonable anger, my useless frustration and much of my destructive self-pity ....”

Gloria sat with her hands folded in her lap, smiling.