Thank You and Good Night

by Ray Succre

  A low grade ran the risk of making it difficult for Fascinelli to find work, yes, but a low grade now might save him from being fired from a show later in his career. The young man could always retake the class and repair the problem, as well. Perhaps he should. Yes, that would be Emery’s resolve with Anthony Fascinelli. The young writer needed to wake up if he was going to do anything with his skill. Better to get a slap now than when a family and rent was on the line. Emery had decided to be academically fair, treat the student as a student, and not a writer. He would have a talk with the young man; advise him that the course be taken again. He hoped Fascinelli would do so. It was a shame to have to give him a D when he obviously understood the material, but the young man had earned that grade, which made it a necessary shame.

  With the removal of drink and cigarettes, the change in his meals, and continuing work at the university, Emery needed to be a different sort of man than he had been, especially now that his very life required it. He wanted nothing from television, and hoped it would require nothing of him. These would be the years when he could grow old and watch his children marry, become a grandfather, and live a relaxed life. There would be no more soul-twisting bog of celebrity, or anti-celebrity, no more false or true acclaim, no alleged or actual failure. There would be no more thinking about these things, fidgeting with his esteem and sense of will, and no more over-analysing what he was, or had done. It was enough, and he was enough. He had worked hard and it was over. Let the kids do the writing, make the shows, run the workings of the screen. He considered himself an elder at this point. A younger elder, yes, and one that wanted the respect he felt he was due, while also being compassionate toward his successors. It would be a tragedy to let all the knowledge and experience he had endured go to waste. The trick was to teach it to his students, term after term, to prepare them, that they might better the industry. He was doing his part, he deduced, in bettering his trade, long after his trade had shoved him away on claims of bad breath.

  The month trudged along, his senses honed from the lack of cigarettes and the idleness of his non-writing hands. He kept a constant, running alarm in his mind regarding his heart. Was that a little pain? Did that brief flit indicate something was wrong again? Perhaps his hand was numb… Honey, squeeze my wrist here… No, harder. Maybe he should sleep with the phone beside him. It was a particularly unique horror to be afraid of his own organs. He visualized the heart, beating in his chest, shoving blood through his body per schedule like a clock; he imagined it stopping with a tremor. What a nightmare. Perhaps most insidious was that a thrombotic attack like that kept a person from being able to speak much, to call out for help. It was cruel; the pain struck and the victim went somewhat mute.

  He had given Beth the notice to watch him closely. Being that the heart attack had occurred in a quiet mode, and had kept him from speaking the thing, Emery created a procedure they could use in the future: If he gave her the peace sign, or if she heard him in another room kicking or slamming his fist against something, a table, the floor, the kitchen counter, the dashboard of the car, anything, she was to consider it another heart attack and either call an ambulance or get him straight to the hospital as fast as the universe would let her. While this code had at first been designed half in humor, as the time of his surgery drew near, he became much more serious about keeping near to her.

  Emery was going under the knife two days after the start of the new term, and he had no choice but to use another substitute to handle the first two weeks of class. This was regrettable, but little else could be done. The doctors said he would not be returning to work for a month, but the doctors did not know him very well. A month’s time was somewhat of an eternity, and he was a strong healer. He bounced back after cancellations, soared quickly through the seasonal flu, had won 16 out of his 19 boxing bouts in the ARMY, and the doctors could ask the shrapnel scarring in his knee what its effect had been on him if they wanted an idea of how long he tended to stay down when struck. Two weeks and he would be back in front of his students. New ones. And as a new man, himself.

  The substitute would pose little trouble this time around, as the assignments were clear and he was able to get his old friend Martin Ward to teach the two weeks as a favor. The university had not approved of this arrangement, but Martin was a classic New Yorker, knew the business in and out, from many levels, and had lectured at school workshops numerous times. Martin also had the benefit of a master’s degree (though he had earned it nearly thirty years prior, and in atmospheric science, of all things).

  Emery was persuasive with the school, and after some campaigning via phone and letters, the school made room for the special arrangement. Martin was excited to take part. Emery had also made up his mind that, after the surgery and his obnoxious recovery process, he and Martin might spend some time together. Fishing with Gary Bond had been relaxing, but while Gary did have the feel of a good acquaintance, he did not give off that energy of being a cohort, which was a sort of sensation between two people that Emery valued much in his rare friendships. Martin, after all the years they had been apart, still felt like an accomplice. Each of the two men had a sense of ire in their humor. It came from all the maneuvering they had both done in the screenwriting world. They had a common master, and for a long time, a common enemy, which would always inject camaraderie into their skulls. Having Ward take on the first two weeks of his classes would likely prove a good idea, and save Emery from having to do much fixing and patching once he was able to return to his students.

  Only two weeks prior, he had finalized a deal for two collections of his early works to be placed in book format, mostly scripts from The Other Side, but there would be a few handpicked stories from his other projects. These were books that would be thick in width, and it was hoped they might fetch an equally thick price. There were to be three volumes to complete the project, but they were less for the public than for people involved in the industry, or individuals with a special interest. They would not have a large print run, but would be profitable in the short run.

  The hospital bills were going to be exorbitant, but the books, his royalties, and his wage from the university would handle these enough, while keeping Rebecca and Vivian’s tuition up, though it was going to come close to breaking his account. All was settled in the basest way, but with money coming in regularly, the Ashers would survive it. He was not certain anyone would read the books, as his name had undergone quite a tarnishing over the years. There was also the fact that his first book, so long ago, had not done well. There were still fans of The Other Side, however, and the show had gone into sporadic reruns over the last decade, proving that it was, by public demand, a little beloved here and there. He wished Larry could have seen that.

  As the day of his surgery approached, the moment when he would be forced unconscious and have his chest opened up, his fear of going beneath the surgeon’s profession escalated wholeheartedly. Surgery was common, and even Bernie Dozier had undergone a bypass only two years back, but there was a natural void of common sense in the matter. In the way a person unschooled in aviation might look upon a jumbo jet and deduce there was no feasible way this ugly, fat thing should ever fly, much less carry passengers, one could just as confusedly look upon surgery. It was one of the few areas in health where science left common sense so far behind that it seemed near to magic. They could cut you open fatally, like a scimitar to the gut or a spear to the chest, and yet keep you from death. They could kill you without killing you, and then raise you up, healed. There was logic to it, of course, and a system of interaction that was intriguing, if not fascinating.

  He was relieved that his heart required no guesswork, no experimenting, and was not going to be trouble. This was a procedure that surgeons performed quite often anymore, and in which the medical world had experience, down into the smallest minutiae. The commonality of surgical treatment to the heart helped to quiet his resolve. His committal to the procedure had been made, but this acceptance and the mild moo
d of his doctor did nothing to dim his nerves.

  The drive to the hospital was as if a death march. It was with an annoying chagrin that he noted their route to the hospital passed the local cemetery. How pleasant. With his mood snuffed into light panic and the urge to smoke pushing against his thoughts with much emphasis, he wanted to cut this scene and skip to those in which he would spend the following weeks in ugly recuperation. He just needed to get onto the gurney and get unconscious. That was all he was required to do: Show up, check in, lie down. After he was out cold, the surgeons could perform their gruesome show.

  “I’ll pick up Vivian from campus; we’ll both be there when you wake up.”

  “God, I’m fucking terrified, Beth.”

  “Are you?”

  “You haven’t noticed? I’m shaking.”

  “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

  “I know, it’s just… well, they should give you a sedative before you even leave the house. I’m crawling out of my skin. Christ, I could use a cigarette.”

  “You’re doing just fine. And I love you for it.”

  “I love you, too. But I’m… I just need to think about something else.”

  They reached the hospital and Emery was admitted. He now simply needed to sit down at his end of the see-saw and wait for the other kid. Beth stayed with him for a time and soon enough, he was in an unflattering gown, lying down on the narrow, tall bed with its slight, metal barricades raised at the sides. Beth drew a thin blanket over him and kissed his nervousness back for a moment. They waited in the antiseptic suite as the clock ticked off time from the wall.

  An anesthesiologist entered after a few minutes and explained the process of putting Emery under, and that this would begin in a few minutes. The two surgeons would be there, as well. When the man exited, Emery squeezed his wife’s hand.

  “It’s all right, you should go,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. You should pick up Vivian and... I’m supposed to be done by six, but he said it'd be a few hours before I wake up. So, I’ll see you around- well, around nine, then?”

  “All right. We’ll be here. Try to relax,” she said.

  “Fuck.”

  “I’ll stay if you want.”

  “No, go ahead. Her car’s out and we don’t want her having to walk. I’ll be in the procedure soon enough. The sooner, the better. This place is awful and I want to go home and get some work done,” he said, staring up at the ceiling and hospital lighting, fighting off a shudder.

  “No, you’re going to rest after this. No work. You’ll need to recover,” Beth said with emphasis.

  “If you say so.”

  Aside from a few statements of yes and no to the various personnel in the surgery suite, ten minutes later, followed by his attempt at counting down from one-hundred, this brief compliancy to her would prove to be the final and yet unaware moment in which he would know his wife, children, and the greathearted panoply of having lived.

  TITLECARD: -Epilogue-

  FADE TO:

  INT. ITHACA COUNTY HOSPITAL MORGUE – TIME UNKNOWN

  A sterile sort of medical room, but with a basement sort of feel. There are several gurneys present in view, at least two of them containing sheeted bodies.

  We focus on the outline of a particular corpse beneath a sheet on a wheeled table in the middle of the room. We pause on this scene for several seconds before a massive tick scutters in from left. The arachnid’s abdomen is somewhat translucent and bloated with blood. It has a somewhat human arrangement from thorax to mouth, however. We see the insect lower his eyes and sniff at the sheet covering the body, at center. The creature moves over specific portions of the body, smelling and gauging. After a moment, we see movement beneath the sheet and the insect quickly scatters off camera, to the right. EMERY sits up and the sheet slides from his torso. He is nude and slowly climbs off the table, a little awkward, standing before the camera, looking fatigued and out-of-sorts. Shortly, his lower body is beneath frame. On his upper chest is a massive and crudely sewn-up set of incisions. Autopsy-like, these are the remnants of a recent heart surgery closed up in a hurry.

  EMERY:

  (running a pale hand through his hair)

  I’m not actually here, you know. This is just editing. I’m being presented to introduce the end. It’s a closing monologue, then we’ll roll with the credits.

  Human beings question talent. It baffles us and we place great emphasis on it. We respect skill, and are impressed with prolificness, but we revere talent because its origin is still unexplained. It operates from a realm of magic yet to be debunked, can seem miraculous, a gift from on high, a genetic mystery... When we encounter someone with much talent, we often say that they’re born to what they do, because it must surely come from somewhere and we don’t know how or why one person has a particular talent while another person does not.

  We are obsessed with those children who show prodigy. We ask what can be done with our talents, and how to get more of them for ourselves, because talent represents advantage and it makes each of us unique.

  I’d like you to think of a man; a self-absorbed and vain man. Now, this man thinks often of himself, and his encouragement to do so comes directly from his love of the self. The reward is quite high, and the effort minimal. Me me me. Given time, however, this character might begin to project himself on other things. He writes a song, and being proud of it, that song feels to be an extension of him. The things he loves are other extensions of him. The careers and hobbies.

  At times, these things can seem to represent him, as if placeholders for his sense of worth and being. Because his focus can begin to treat these things as if they were simply more "him", the selfish man can dwell on them as he would his self, with all of his defenses and vanity, with his intricate engine of self-love, arrogantly protecting them and obsessing on them per his will. It is betterment from without, and a builder of dedication and loyalty.

  His selfishness gains in power and can then be swiveled about, to focus on things outside of him. He treats these outer subjects the way he treats himself; he dotes on them, and changes them, and picks at them, and tries to perfect them. He works to leash them and better them with the full power of his natural compulsion to be who and what he is, and have others comprehend it. He does it for attention, but his own, and the subjects of his self-focus are never far from his thoughts.

  We have a name for this. We call it drive, and by its nature, it is a beautifully selfish and productive mode. It harnesses all of our conceits and compulsions and self-absorption and lets us focus it on something, for once, not ourselves. Drive is the inevitable result of that black hole of self-love becoming so hungry and clever that it reaches beyond its initial confine in the pursuit of more feed. It mutates a deadly sin into a prime virtue, and is the stuff of art and enterprise.

  We never know this man well. He spends much of his life placing himself in the inanimate, and because we cannot follow him there, we see only the objects, and only the man, the reactions they produce, but not the self they share and not the desperation with which they are connected. We see influences, additives, and catalysts, but never the true, base compound. We note the song-and-dance and we say “driven”.

  A voice speaks from out of frame, distracting EMERY.

  VOICE:

  Two minutes, Em.

  EMERY:

  (nods, changes tone)

  I’d like to thank a few people. A lot of work went into the production of my life’s script. I was a lousy producer for much of it, but was lucky to have a good crew. Beth played my wife with so much skill she deserves her own Emmy. Rebecca and Vivian Asher played my daughters. There was Larry and Calvin and Bernie and Maury and Martin... even Frank Gill and Orson Banry. My imaginary friend, Lieutenant Merrill, who I’m sure you’ve already concluded was a device, played his part, as well. Writers, directors, soldiers, neighbors. We’re all devices, really. Everyone plays their part, and that’s what life is good fo
r. Fade in, one million dissolves, wipe black.

  There was a man I killed up close… a Japanese man. I’d like to say how sorry I am. I don’t know his name, but he was a part of my life, too. And the others who I didn’t see up close. I have too many thanks and apologies to make. There are so many parts and characters in a person’s life, and they’re all played out perfectly, even when you amalgamate them into larger assemblies and call them the viewers, or the group of one’s lovers, the group of the critics, the mass of a nation’s enemies... These are allocations given to individuals that must be combined for any one person’s script to work.

  VOICE:

  One minute.

  EMERY:

  (annoyed and refusing to hurry)

  Death is the one instance where a script is truly and utterly final. It is the putting away of the last draft. Now, I’m here, but not really. In a moment, you’ll see the screen flicker in a momentary, almost-too-fast-to-catch way, and I’ll be gone. A cigarette burn, you know. The new strip of film will have been spliced in, and in a single frame, I’ll simply cease to exist again and we’ll be on to the new reel. Are you ready? Because I’m not.

  We see a quick flit of the frame, a cigarette burn on the splice, and ASHER is no longer present. We see that he has returned to his table, under the sheet as if it had never been disturbed. We’re in the newly spliced-in footage. BETH ASHER steps into frame. She is the HOST.