by Ray Succre
EMERY:
(distant)
No, sir. I suppose I’m not.
MERRILL:
A shame. Life is a hunt; a series of maneuvers. Lights a fire in your skull when you do it right.
EMERY:
(sad)
I can’t make anything work anymore. Maybe- maybe I malfunctioned somewhere. Or it’s possible I just wasn’t designed for this sort of life.
MERRILL:
It does keep breaking down.
EMERY:
But I have so much work to do.
MERRILL:
Work? Formally discharged! There’s no work. You’re out, private. Fired, by a better man, and right to your smug face. How very cosmopolitan. And now look at them. Look at all the mothers’ faces as you drive past. Their husbands are not present and they’re noticing you. Isn’t that nice? They’re thinking thoughts.
(shakes head)
Where ARE the other husbands? They must be at work, don’t you think? I wonder if they’re faithful to their wives.
EMERY:
Leave me alone.
MERRILL:
(leaning back and lost in thought)
That man Cully down the street, who you dislike... does he have affairs? No, not him. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Does he have a job? Yes, I’m certain he does. Likely for many, many years now. And he comes home at the same time each night, and he eats the same boring meals, and he loves the same woman, and they go on vacations wherein they buy trinkets and windchimes.
But you’re not like him, are you, Private? No, you’re better. Higher rank, maybe. Why, look at you! Here you are, going home in the middle of a beautiful day! But then, there’s nowhere else for you to be, is there? You can’t hunt, you can’t bring down game anymore, and no one who wants you around.
EMERY:
(eyes beginning to water, choking up)
It keeps happening. It’s- nothing stays put. Everything keeps moving around and I don’t get to keep things. I don’t get to have them even when they’re mine. I don’t like this place and I don’t like what it does to a man.
MERRILL:
Ah, but at least you have your good marriage. And those two wonderful daughters! Well, it’s true that they don’t really know you so clearly, but there’s time! The wife will help them to get to know their father, surely. After all, she knows you. She’s the one person who always has and always will. What a grand union marriage is. You’re nearly home, Private, but then... do you think the wife will be pleased to see you?
EMERY:
(clearing throat, trying to regain composure)
No. No, she will not.
CUT TO:
A roof shot of the Roadster 6 slowly turning into the driveway. The engine cuts off, but the driver-side door does not open. Beat. We slowly ZOOM down, toward the windshield from the roof of Emery’s house, until we have a C.U. through the glass. He’s just sitting there, alone and blank.
FADE TO:
The empty house with the familiar smell. Emery walked into the kitchen and hastily began scattering whiskey into a glass. No ice, just the amber liquid. He glanced out through the kitchen window at the middle of Tuesday. The house was cool from his having forgotten to turn the heat on before leaving for the meeting. The day was somewhat warm however, and he sat on the couch in the living room, drinking his whiskey and wrinkling up his suit, staring at the black of the television screen.
Beth and the girls were out. The girls were in school and Beth was in town somewhere, likely returning the sweater great Aunt Vera had sent Rebecca for Christmas, and which had not fit. Vera, in her advanced age, seemed to think Rebecca was still about ten years old. The sweater had been too small for her, but too large for Vivian, who disliked sweaters anyway. There would likely be other errands involved in the trip into downtown, and so Emery had the cool house to himself for a spell. He eyed his typewriter and thought to sit down and begin something. A skit. A pilot. Work on the stage-play for All the System that was still eluding him, perhaps now out of spite. The mood was not in him.
He walked over and set his hand on the typewriter, feeling how cold to the touch it was in the unheated home. After a moment, he made his way to the thermostat and turned the heat up, fetched the coat he had only taken off a minute ago. He stepped outside and locked the door, returning to his car. Being alone was for the deserter, not Emery. It was for punch-drunk sods who had no family, no friends. The isolation some saw as hardening and a creator of character was in fact a maker of threadbare sanity and prolonged misery. There were scripts he could pull out and rewrite, revision that could be done, but he did not want to be alone with his work. He could not trust it and this frightened him. The ignition turned over and he left the block, making his way across town with more on his mind than he could handle just then.
The truth was suddenly without brakes, the towering, shaky verity of his ability with words, coming down all around him. Perhaps he was bad at his craft, after all. Perhaps he had only seen the praising public, and not the true thing for which he supposedly wrote, the masses that shrugged at him or frowned, the masses that could care less for him. All the scripts, the shows, the awards and movies… a gold path he had thought he achieved, but that might have simply been a path of blind luck notched by a bit of random selection at the start. Each shining Emmy could well have been the television equivalent of a Purple Heart.
Did he not at times complain that these awards often went to untalented writers that seemed to be chosen for little more than favoritism or luck? Could it be that he, himself, was one of these? He had often claimed that people were beginning to favor mediocrity in television. Did he believe this? He did. And people enjoyed his shows… Perhaps he was mediocre, as well. Emery fiddled with the radio in the car and hastily lit a cigarette. He rolled the window down and tried to focus on driving.
“A lucky hack. No. No, because you work hard… But you are one. That’s all, a dissimulater. A haircut on a broom. That’s not true, you’re ahead of the pack most days. That’s true. That’s what happens. But you’ve burned up. Have you? Fuck yes. Look at you… oh god, I’m going out of my skull. I need another drink. Maybe I should be a teamster; that’s a secure job. I wouldn’t get fired every season. Okay, I have to relax. I just need to relax. I’ll go to Larry’s. Yeah, I should do that. I miss Larry. Larry’s a good person and he’s had a nervous breakdown and I should go see him before I have one, too.”
CUT TO:
INT. LARRY BELMONT’S DEN - AFTERNOON
Various articles of the writing life are positioned with personal charm across a desk, which is situated before and panes of a window. There is a poster of The Other Side’s main title on a back wall near a window, in a glass frame. There are some pictures hung here and there of Larry standing near other people for whom he seems to hold respect.
C.U. of one such picture, an image of Larry and Emery standing with their arms around a set painter coated in what would appear to be an entire spilled bucket of gray paint. Their suits are being ruined in this moment and they’re smiling with genuine fun.
LARRY is sitting in a recliner near a wall of the room, and EMERY sits in the chair at the desk, which is turned around to face the room. He holds a beer in his hand and the two men continue the conversation they’ve been having.
ASHER:
(concerned)
And they really have no idea?
BELMONT:
(clearing his throat several times)
No, they’ve had lots. But they take it all back as quick as they say. First, they thought Lou Gehrig’s disease. Wasn’t that. Thankfully. They thought it was multiple sclerosis, too, but that was a bust. I just don’t have the right symptoms. It keeps changing. I am considering myself an enigma. But Helen’s going crazy, I think.
CUT TO:
An ill man and a well one. Emery had been shocked by Larry’s appearance, which did not demonstrate the seasonal onset of a flu, bronchitis, or even the pneumonia he had thought, until
today, to be Larry’s actual trouble. Calvin Moffat, several months back, had supposed over the phone that Larry was suffering from syphilis, but Emery had doubted this much. There had also been talk among people that knew Larry that the problem was malaria, of all things, which would have been a devastating and horrible thing, but now, eight months from its onset, the illness that gripped Larry Belmont was beyond anything Emery had seen. He had simply thought that Larry was quite ill, and that the younger man would need time to recover from whatever trouble he had contracted. Emery now understood, however, that Larry was more than sick, and that the fellow writer was not recovering.
The good friend, four years Emery’s younger, looked to be in his fifties. His face had begun to wrinkle with age, his hair had begun to gray, and his hands shook with an immediacy that was unsettling. Parkinson’s disorder, it would seem, but attached to something far worse. The severe trouble was taking its toll on Larry’s mind, as well. He had problems summarizing what he thought, or keeping track of the conversation. He was slow to speak, and careful. Emery was horrified and tried to push this facet of the illness from his mind. Larry’s personality, his very being, was wrapped up in a unique and talented mind. It was more of him than his appearance had ever been. To see this mind degrade in such a way struck a deathly chill into Emery. This illness was attacking and devouring Larry’s self, not just his body.
Emery swallowed and found himself furious with the medical establishment. What the hell had happened? He wondered when the klieg lights were going to come on and the cameras were going to stop rolling. He kept expecting Nina and the effects man to enter the room any moment to work on the transformative Methuselah makeup Larry had to be wearing.
“It uh, was first just a ‘mysterious brain disease’? Which was scary,” Larry continued.
“Damn, I’m sure it was.”
“But then they added Pick’s Disease. And that’s- I don’t know. They haven’t removed that diagnosis yet, but I don’t think it’s that. Doctor Dolkin says he thinks I have Alzheimer’s, too.”
“Jesus, Larry. That’s just impossible. That can’t be right.”
“No. A doctor in the valley- god, what was her name- it was… I don’t know her name. But there keep being more doctors. I have four now.”
“Okay.”
“So, she says it’s maybe related to spinal meningitis. Because I had that when I was a kid.”
“So, what’s the bottom line? What are they saying at this point? How long to cure it?”
“Depends on who you ask. Some say not for years. UCLA threw me in every machine they had and… and they poked an awful lot of needles in me, too. I… they made me get naked and walk around all day with them, room to room. And like a duck walk? Like squatting. It was funny. I had a gown but it was like nothin’. Helen thought it was funny, too.”
“Right, okay.”
“But uh, UCLA... they said it’s a death sentence.”
Emery leaned back a moment and gathered his thoughts. The last statement had that intrinsic shock that could stop most people in their tracks the instant it was uttered. He looked on his friend and his mind spun. He didn’t know what to say, whether to believe it, or how to react. His first notion was to abstain from accepting the statement. Doctors had been wrong before, and in Larry’s case, they could easily be wrong again.
“No. No, that’ll turn out to be untrue,” Emery said.
“Well, I’m gonna die, Em. I mean, I’m- look at me. I’m aging. That- that’s how it started, I think. Helen noticed but I didn’t think much of it, then Calvin said something and I thought, okay, that’s two; I’d better get checked out. My stomach hurt and I’d get headaches. It started up with that. I still have all of that.”
“I remember you talked about having stomach aches around the second season of The Other Side. You were always guzzling Bromo.”
“Yeah, that stuff. I don’t drink it anymore. Doesn’t help. I can’t really drink much of anything. Lost almost thirty pounds now and so Helen figured uh, maybe cancer, like her uncle, and I thought so, too, but the doctors say it’s definitely not that.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Well, it’s worse, I think. The Bromo was for my stomach, but there was more than that goin’ on. I just didn’t tell anyone because it was so weird.”
“I figured you just had ulcers like Dozier and Rowe.”
“Naw, no ulcers. Just stomach trouble and headaches. But… now, that was the start, because I started looking older. Really fast. Right after Other Side was over. Helen kept on me about it because it was... it got dramatic. I could see it in the mirror. Uh… I was with a doctor then and he didn’t know anything. But I didn’t want to say anything to my friends.”
“They think you’re aging faster than usual?” This was said more in conversational lead than an actual question. It was obvious from Larry’s appearance that he was fifteen or so years past where he was supposed to be. It was flooring, but Emery didn’t want to express that he had already noticed it.
“Pff. You see me. Helen figures it at two years to a month. I think it’s a little faster than that.”
“Two—”
“Like about every month, I age around two years. I’ll go through two-and-a-half decades every time you have a birthday. Like twenty-four years in a year… yeah.”
“No, that’s insane, Larry. That’s-”
“By next Christmas, I’ll be just past seventy. Doctor… oh, it was, uh… well, he ran the UCLA tests, anyway, and he gave me this. It’s good reading.”
Larry got to his feet and hobbled to his bookshelf. Emery was aghast at his movement, the crippled nature of it, the awkward gait, and the bent back. It was horrifying. Not two years ago, Emery had run about the set with this man, his good friend, laughing and working hard. This was a capable human being, but now was as if a man who had lived thirty years of hard labor and tyrannical punishment. Emery had to fight to stay sitting, to stay in the room, mortified with what life was doing to Larry Belmont.
“Here it is,” Larry said then, retrieving a bundle of papers from atop several books, handing them to Emery before making his troubled, hard-breathing way to his recliner. Emery kept a tear in, but this was getting to be too much for him to hold back. He distracted himself by clearing his throat and looking over the papers, fishing in his pocket for his cigarettes. Belmont directed him to the third page, near the bottom. Emery found the passage in question, one addressed to Dr. Dolkin from a Doctor Porte: We have determined that there is no treatment for this disease. It is permanent and terminal. Mr. Belmont may live from six months up to three years, but likely not reach that maximum. He will decline in health and the disease will overcome him more and more, to the point at which he won’t be able to stand up. Once bedridden, the disease will progress rapidly. He will not feel any pain. His mind will deteriorate into incognizance, and in those final days, he will likely not know his whereabouts, who he is, or even that he is dying. Treatment at this point should focus on dignity and comfort.
Holding an emotion back was plausible until the overwhelming struck itself against one’s mind. The paper fan of Emery’s resolve not to cry had no power over the gale that now filled the room. He covered his face with his hands, his head lightly motioning in his breath’s heaves, shoulders shaking without sound. Belmont did not move or speak. He sat in his recliner with the air of a person who was ruminating on an expected disappointment, as if thoughtfully going over the unfavorable report card that had arrived from his child’s school. Several moments passed and Emery lifted his head and rubbed his eyes clear with his sleeve, coating his sadness with the tin-foil resolve he had managed to build up again.
“Unh... Christ,” Emery said, getting hold of himself.
“Bizarre, right?”
“Larry, it’s like something you’d write.”
“That’s what I keep telling Helen.”
“How- how is she? With all of this?”
“Not good, Em. Not good at all.
She’s a sweetie, but… well maybe… maybe you could have Beth come over sometime. Helen uh… just she could use a friend, is all.”
“Consider it done.”
“Say, how’s that uh, that new show? I’ve been watching. Well, I fall asleep sometimes before, but I’ve seen most of it. You got something there. Hey, I remember when you wrote that, too, because remember when you told me about it? We were at that Irish pub where the guy said television was a homosexual art.”
Emery let out a snort of relief, both for the subject change and the silliness with which it had affected him. His day’s troubles were nothing when compared to the awful, unfair, horribly creeping end that Larry now faced. It was a tragic stipend of life that all would die in time, but to go like Larry... it was a macabre and brutal fate. How could it be real? Emery found himself thinking that networks cancelled shows, but they could not cancel a writer. They ended productions, but not the people who made them. What was happening to Belmont was total rescission, the cancellation of a human being from existence, and in a manner atrocious, cruel, and wholly undeserved.
“Well, they cancelled it,” Emery said before giving a slight but wry smile, “Just today, in fact.”
Larry grunted and sat up, seeming to be in pain, hunching over his stomach with a reddened face. Emery was alarmed until Belmont’s mouth opened and the laughing poured out. This was a huge laugh and Larry fell into it wholeheartedly, holding his stomach as he did so. Emery viewed this odd reaction at first with surprise, and concern for the clutching of the stomach that accompanied Larry’s laughter. This particular vision of Belmont, behind the disease and altered appearance, the Belmont of previous years laughing at Emery’s cancellation with utmost hilarity, caused an explosion of much-needed mirth in Emery’s mind.