by Nick Cole
The night clerk, a Pakistani eating a pluot and smiling through gold teeth, extended a room key. His beaming face, a substitute for words, conveyed best wishes for a good night’s rest.
Soon the Great Director was walking down the hall toward an elevator at the far end. First floor rooms lined the passageway. He heard the drone of television sets bleating monotonously behind closed doors, and it seemed that each set was tuned to the same program. As the Great Director plodded down the seemingly endless hallway, he heard a continuous string of interrelated snippets from behind those doors.
A baritone voice uttered a pain-filled, “I’ll get you, Saramago, if it’s the last thing I ever do.” This was followed by gunfire. At the next door, the baritone comforted a crying woman as she wept, babbling, “He’s gone. He’s really gone!” A few doors later, a funeral home organ played as the baritone said, “Listen, Chandler, I know the score on that cat. He’s dead. Nothing’s ever gonna bring him back. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a job to do!” The other voice, probably Chandler, spoke a few doors later. “You’re outta line, Carmichael.” Then the baritone finished at the last door before the elevator. “No, Chief. You’re outta line. I’m taking him down as sure as rain on Monday.” A disco funk beat with a wah-wah guitar played. Then an even-toned announcer asked viewers if they owned term life insurance.
The Great Director pushed the elevator button and waited. Moments later, the doors swung shakily open, and the Great Director rode slowly to the third floor. There was enough time to get through most of the Muzak version of “Soul Man” over the elevator speakers.
At the third floor the doors opened onto a darkened hallway. Standing in the brightness of the elevator lights, the Great Director wondered for a moment if he’d arrived on the wrong floor. He looked again at the lit floor button in the elevator. Three.
Maybe this floor was under construction.
As his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see a dim blue illumination emanating from underneath the regularly spaced doors.
The Great Director palmed his key and adjusted it so it would be ready to insert into the lock as soon as he reached his door. It felt like a small blade in his hand, at the ready, in case anything came leaping out from behind a closed door. Then he took a tentative step out into the hallway, examining the nearest door number. His room was some distance down. The elevator door closed behind him.
Slowly he began to walk down the hall, passing each door. Once again he noted that all the occupants seemed to be watching the same show, though this time its nature was more subdued. Possibly a doctor show.
A different baritone uttered a pain-filled, “I’ll get you, Dr. Taibo, if it’s the last thing I ever do.” This was followed by a clattering sound. Medical instruments perhaps. At the next door, the baritone comforted a crying woman as she wept, babbling, “He’s gone. He’s really gone!” A few doors later, a funeral home organ played as the baritone said, “Listen, Dr. Conrad, I know the patient’s gone. He’s dead, and nothing is ever going to bring him back. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a job to do.” The other voice, probably Dr. Conrad, spoke a few doors later. “You’re violating hospital protocol, Dr. London.” Then the baritone finished at the last door next to his room. “No, sir. You’re violating protocol. I’m taking him down, and that’s a ticket you can cash!” The show’s music, an electronically enhanced ambulance siren accompanied by a thumping upright bass beat and a wah-wah guitar, played into the commercial. An even-toned announcer asked viewers if they were depressed.
The Great Director stuck his key in the door stamped with his room number in faded gold and turned the lock.
Inside he flipped on the lights, hoping to wash away the gloom of the hallway with the stark white walls of a nice hotel room. Instead he found a bizarre assemblage of pea soup-green leatherette furniture, a yellow bedspread, and a strange blue wallpaper whose design had likely been inspired by the backdrop of an alien planet from the original Star Trek television show. It was a swirling deep blue with gold-flecked fault lines tearing away at the very fabric of space. Openings into cavernous wells of azure nothingness.
The Great Director dropped his bag and examined the lurid appointments. It was innocuously terrifying. It made him want to call Dr. Mandelbaum, who had left a series of messages on his cell phone during the three-day shooting spree.
The motel was the tallest building in this small town beside the interstate. From his window, he could see other, much smaller buildings spattered throughout the lonely little freeway town. Orange streetlights cast a dull illumination across roads and buildings, creating a sense of snow. The town lay motionless, save for the stoplights, which blinked red and green intermittently at this latest of hours. All this he could see from his lofty window.
He looked out upon the valley floor, stretching away toward lonely towns that dotted the near and far of his perspective. Empty spaces of dark void filled up the vast in-betweens, black velvet wastes swaddling desperately hopeful, brightly lit villages in the distance. Tiny blue-white starbursts indicated massive gas stations or large fruit-packing companies. And all along the orange-lit banks of the interstate river dwelt towns whose commerce and industry lay in the rent of a mattress for a weary traveler crossing from here to there in all the nights that wait between our days.
Always crossing.
From here to there.
The Great Director had no idea how long he stood, rooted to the spongy carpet, watching, but the truths of his meditation on towns and lights, beds and travelers, left him feeling strangely refreshed. He no longer needed sleep, so he decided to call Dr. Mandelbaum. The tone of the psychiatrist’s messages had indicated some kind of urgency and a desperate invitation to call at whatever time necessary.
And after all, I am a film director, thought the Great Director. People knew this about him. It was not uncommon for people who worked in the movie business to keep unreasonable hours for the tidying of personal affairs.
He sat down on the bed and entered the number Dr. Mandelbaum had left. The phone rang once, twice, and then a gravelly voice grumbled something vaguely Hispanic into the receiver. It was slang rather than the formal greeting one might learn in a Spanish class, when one is calling on Doña Garcia to ask if she is going to the record store by car or by bicecleta.
“Dr. Mandelbaum?” tried the Great Director. The Spanish voice grumbled again.
In the background, Dr. Mandelbaum’s voice could be heard. “See, I told you I was expecting a phone call.” The other voice rumbled something in Spanish. Then came a large sucking noise as though someone was inhaling the last drop of water from the bottom of a metallic canteen with a very small straw.
“Give it!” snapped a far-off Mandelbaum angrily. “Idiots!” he muttered, his voice near now, indicating he’d obtained possession of the receiver.
“Dr. Mandelbaum,” tried the Great Director again, uncertainly.
“One sec. Give me one second. I’m trying to get this cigarette lit and the Santa Anas have really picked up,” he said irritably. The Santa Anas were windstorms that bore down out of the El Cajon pass, buffeting Orange and Los Angeles Counties, causing havoc and destruction to everything not nailed down.
“Where are you, Dr. Mandelbaum?” asked the Great Director.
“One sec.” Mandelbaum could be heard clicking his lighter fruitlessly. “Damn!” he muttered and continued clicking.
“Maybe I should call back another time?” offered the Great Director.
“No.” Click, click, click, click. “Almost got it.” Click, click…
“It’s late. I’m sorry. I’ll call back, really,” offered the Great Director.
Mandelbaum continued to click his lighter.
“No. I really want to talk to you. I need to talk to you, in fact.” Click, click, click, click, click, click…
The Great Director felt his heart catch in his
throat. The psychiatrist continued to click click the lighter. This was exciting, thought the Great Director. It was not often his doctors ever said they “needed” to talk to him. It was always a nonchalant, “Yes, I’ll see you on Tuesday; we’ll pick up on what we were discussing last time. And I want you to think about this or that until then.”
In that regard, Dr. Mandelbaum had, until now, been just like the other doctors, but in most other ways he had been surprisingly different. Mandelbaum never passed judgment on anything he’d said, and often prompted new meditations with his strange non sequiturs. Seemingly random, paranoid questions had opened up whole new vistas of therapy for the Great Director to discuss. The Great Director had found he could really open up to the intense yet fidgety man who had become his favorite doctor. It was with Mandelbaum he had most expressed his desire, or at least come closest to his desire to express, his Escape To Alaska plan.
And now this. For the doctor to call him and say that he, Dr. Mandelbaum, needed to talk. Maybe the Great Director had finally convinced someone he was not just paranoid, but justifiably cautious. That the forces of death were indeed out to get him. That he had everything to fear including fear itself, and that he should start doing so immediately. This was the breakthrough he’d felt sure was just around the corner. And now, at 1:26 in the a.m., all would be revealed. The Great Director was ready for the truth.
“Do you need to talk to me about death?” ventured the Great Director.
Click, click, click, click. Then, finally, the ashy crinkle of flame-engulfed tobacco.
“Yes!” whispered Mandelbaum triumphantly. He inhaled and sighed, expressing a relief worthy of the guiltiest of recently commuted Death Row prisoners.
“Do you finally agree with me?” shrieked the Great Director. “Do you realize that Death is out to get me? I knew you’d finally see it. I knew I wasn’t crazy. I thought I was, but then I remembered crazy people never suspect they’re crazy. So I knew I wasn’t crazy and that must mean I’m due to get creamed by the Grim Reaper. I don’t know why, but I just have this feeling. I have this other fear also. Consider this: if I die, stressed out over my last film, the studio can claim it was the labor of love that killed me. Wouldn’t that be convenient, for them that is. Within hours of my death they’d be braying all over town that this was my greatest, last, best film. And it had killed me. They’d probably think that might somehow raise the opening gross by a percentage point or two. I know that’s what they’d do. They’ve probably already got some cruddy montage of all my films to run during the Academy Awards to generate hype for the DVD Special Director’s Cut Tribute release, in which, since I died before the completion of filming, all the other directors will get together and hack away at my work as though they’re cutting in honor of my style. That’s ridiculous! I haven’t had a style in years. It’s so like them to pull a gimmick like that. It’s only a matter of time I tell you, before Tarantino is re-cutting A Clockwork Orange or David Fincher is chopping away at The Godfather, which is really not such a bad idea when you think about it. But that’s not the point! Should we be doing these things? Sure, it’ll make money, it’s a good idea. But aren’t these films inviolable? Art as it were. Shouldn’t they hang in a museum next to Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer? Do we need Wyland putting whales behind the Mona Lisa? Do we, I ask?”
On the other end of the line, the pop of a can could be heard, followed by a long, loud, thirsty gulp.
“Listen,” Mandelbaum said, then paused to burp. “I need to borrow some money, plain and simple. You’re my most well-to-do patient, so I’m asking, no I’m really begging you. I need money. I’m in big trouble. I bet a lot of money that I didn’t rightfully own, and I bet badly. I’d like to tell you a story about betting it all on a sure thing, a horse called Four Hands, and how the horse had a bad break and I lost everything. But I feel I have to be honest with you, and the truth is I made a lot of very small mistakes at cards, dice, and whatever action anyone was offering. If I don’t have the money by tomorrow morning, some very bad men are going to kill me.” He was lying. He had indeed bet all the money on one horse. But very bad men were still going to kill him all the same. Which is unusual for bookies. Generally they just want their money back and so they will only hurt you and make you wish you were dead. But with Mandelbaum, by the end of a week’s worth of betting, they were ready to kill him, for the simple reason that they did not like him at all.
All of this had started just after one of the Great Director’s appointments. The next patient had been a compulsive gambler. After that it was only a matter of time for Mandelbaum.
“I know this is completely out of bounds concerning our patient-client relationship,” continued the doctor. “But as your doctor I have to ask you for money. After all, you are my patient and you should want me to live. I really am your responsibility.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?” replied the Great Director.
“I don’t know,” wailed Mandelbaum. “I’m sick. I’m desperate. I haven’t been home in five days. I’ve been living on Funyuns and cigarettes and I’m tired. So tired. I need help and I don’t know where to turn. Please help me.”
“But aren’t you supposed to be helping me? Aren’t you the one that’s supposed to be… you know, above these things… I mean gambling. It sounds like you have a problem if you’re in so deep that the bookie already wants to kill you. How long has this been going on?”
“About a week.”
“A week?”
“Yes, a week. I just threw myself into it, if you will. I really don’t know much about gambling, especially on horses. But I am learning, and I think that’s a valuable lesson we can take away from this.” The valuable lesson Mandelbaum had learned was never to pick a horse just because you liked the name.
“I don’t know. It sounds weird. I mean… I enjoy our sessions, Dr. Mandelbaum. I feel I can really talk to you, but gambling debts, c’mon.”
“You can talk to me. I’m here for you.” Mandelbaum desperately hoped that if the Great Director gave him the money, he would not ask Mandelbaum to be there for him until after post time at the track later the next day. There was still a chance Mandelbaum could make a killing if he had the money he needed to pay off the bookie before he paid the bookie off.
“I think you’ve made great progress,” lied Dr. Mandelbaum, having no idea how much progress the Great Director had actually made. He desperately wished he’d thought to bring his patients’ files with him when he’d fled the office because an Italian-looking guy had parked in the lot outside his office. Alas he had not. He squeezed his eyes together now, trying to recall some detail of the Great Director’s case history to add to his plea for money to pay off his gambling debt. All he could remember was a headless woman and the letters P and U.
“I think we’re on the verge of something,” continued Mandelbaum. “We’re just beginning to find out about your psychological aversion to certain smells.”
“What?” exclaimed the Great Director.
“And not being able to view women as anything other than headless sex objects!” interjected Mandelbaum quickly, hoping to avoid the disaster of his bad first guess. “Once we solve those questions we can really get down to some serious therapy.”
The Great Director didn’t even bother to argue. Maybe these were things he’d confessed. Things the astute Dr. Mandelbaum had detected, layered in the substrata of the Great Director’s obviously deranged subconscious. He couldn’t remember viewing women only as sex objects, other than the ones who had wanted him to, and those he certainly had. Except with heads. Maybe that wasn’t normal, he thought. The headless thing was a bit confusing.
“It would be a shame if I were dead,” opined Mandelbaum. “Then we couldn’t continue our sessions because I’d be… you know, dead.”
“I had a really strange dream the other day while I was on a bus, dozing,” said the Grea
t Director hopefully.
“And we are going to talk about that very important dream, just as soon as I get rid of these hired killers by paying off my gambling debts, getting a good night’s rest, and returning to the office. Now about the loan…”
“I want to tell you about this dream. It’s important. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I had it, and I know… I just know it means something. Please, real quick, help me out over the phone, doctor, and I’ll send you the money and then we can meet when I get back.”
There was a long pause at the other end of the line. Mandelbaum sighed, fumbled around in his coat, and lit another cigarette. This time with a minimum of clicking.
“All right,” Mandelbaum exclaimed tiredly into the phone as he exhaled smoke from his wind-cracked lips. He picked up a can of beer he’d purchased in the form of a six-pack and kept in the car while waiting for the Great Director’s call. He took a swig and settled in to listen to the Great Director’s dream. Moments into the account, the Santa Ana winds, warm and hot, buffeted the two a.m. parking lot of the convenience mart where Mandelbaum had been keeping watch over the bank of payphones.
“I don’t know why, but in this dream,” began the Great Director, “I’m a baby. You know, like an infant. I just know I am. And even though I can’t see it, I know I’m sitting in the back of a 1966 mint green Ford Mustang. It’s snowing outside. All I can see are white snowflakes drifting in and out of the darkness through pine trees high above. They come down through this orange streetlight and land on the windshield of the Mustang. I feel very happy and safe in the dream. It’s warm in the car. I know my mother is in the front seat, and I know my father is somewhere nearby, coming to get us, I think. We’re waiting for him, maybe. The whole time, I’m watching this one snowflake. It drifts down and lands on the windshield, and for a moment, I am the snowflake. I have arrived and this is my life. I am it and it is me. And then seconds later, the windshield wiper just kills the snowflake. Blots it out of existence forever. In that moment, I feel… what? Afraid of the future? Death? I don’t know. But somehow, that’s the source of it. All my fears. I feel like it’s the first moment I realized things don’t go on forever. The big windshield wiper of death is waiting for all of us. At the moment we arrive, when we land exactly where we’re supposed to be, it strikes us down and blots us out. What does that mean, Dr. Mandelbaum?”