Slow Fade

by Rudolph Wurlitzer

  “Now you’re talking like a man I can trust,” Walker said. “A man who can get the job done, no matter what the sacrifice.”

  “Look, Walker,” A.D. said in an effort to nail down his intentions once and for all. “I’ve been on the road and I’ve sniffed up other people’s exhaust. This is America. You’re allowed to change horses in midstream. That’s what the brochure says and that’s what I’m going to do. You’re my connection to some of that gold from the image bank, and I’m asking you: are you going to sign or not?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “A way back into the action. You’re out of touch, in case you haven’t noticed. But I’m your transformer. That’s a producer’s job.”

  “How do you know I won’t phone in the information to the old man and have done with it? I mean, all he’s hanging in for is to find out about Clem.”

  “You won’t do that. But if you do pull the plug on me, I’ll break half the bones in your body. I’m playing hardball now, Walker. Forget dreamball.”

  “In that case, I’ll sign,” Walker said. He was enjoying A.D.’s intensity. “But if you’re the producer you shouldn’t get any more money from the old man. That’s for the writer.”

  “That’s not the way it works,” said A.D., who had already lost more than half of the four thousand he had set aside for himself. “My money is supervising money. To see that you stay out of trouble and get the script done. Your old man knows that a man without product is only half a man. He wants to see you up on your feet and fully wrapped.”

  Walker signed the contract and put the ten grand in his pocket.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, arriving in Las Vegas for breakfast and checking into Caesar’s Palace, a place they both knew too well. A.D. had played his share of gigs there in the past and Walker had wandered through on various lost weekends out of and away from Beverly Hills, mostly for championship fights and long bouts of compulsive fucking. After they had slept for a few hours, A.D. went off to the post office in the blazing sun to pick up the cashier’s check from Wesley, and Walker went to the casino.

  Walker played recklessly, without paying much attention to the cards, and lost over two thousand dollars in an hour. He didn’t mind losing. In fact, more than a part of him was engaged in losing, and he played hundred-dollar chips without caution or design. It was 11 a.m. and there weren’t many people around and the air had been pumped full of oxygen so that there was more than enough to go around. Despite the ionized air the blackjack dealers were more mechanical and bored than usual, and Walker changed tables a few times, either for luck or because he didn’t like a dealer’s vibrations. As he was about to leave and quit playing altogether, a woman sat down next to him. Her fingers were elegant and Oriental, with long tapering fingernails and an absence of rings. He guessed that she was Chinese. When he finally looked at her face she was more complicated than that. She was Eurasian, and her flat opaque eyes reflected only weariness and the distant possibility of play for pay. She wore a black silk dress with a high neck and the usual slit on the side. A delicate survey of wrinkles was visible on her upper neck and around her eyes. But it was her utter fatigue that comforted Walker, as when she checked him out while lighting a cigarette, her eyes staring blankly through him, bored and unseeing. He forgot about her while he won and then lost a few hundred dollars, but when she got up to leave he followed in her wake, sitting next to her at another table. After she lost, he shoved a pile of chips toward her. They played anonymously until the cocktail waitress came around and he bought her a brandy and soda.

  “What do you have in mind?” She tapped on the table for a card replacement.

  “I thought we might spend some time together.”

  As they got up to leave, a hand touched Walker’s shoulder. The hand was large and well manicured and belonged to a tall, distinguished man in horn-rimmed glasses and gray sideburns. He was dressed in a white tennis outfit and carried two racquets. Next to him was a smaller, rotund man and a thin blond girl with a perfectly shaped Revlon face. They, too, wore white tennis outfits.

  “Walker Hardin. My God.” The man in the horn-rimmed glasses seemed genuinely shocked. “I thought you were in China or Korea or someplace.”

  Walker nodded, trying to place the man’s face.

  “Ben,” the man said, picking up on Walker’s disorientation. “Ben Copperthwaite. I was production manager on The Last Charge. You and your sister were in that scene on the river. Jesus, you must have been no more than eleven or twelve. An obnoxious brat. Remember? The boat tipped over. I’ll never forget it. Your old man flipped out and fired a busload of people.”

  Walker didn’t remember but he said he did and they chatted for a while, Ben introducing his tennis partners with names Walker immediately forgot and Walker mumbling a reference to the exhausted woman standing next to him as “one of my Eastern business partners.”

  “I have my own production company now.” Ben’s tight busy smile took in Walker’s sneakers, bandaged leg, cut-off jeans, red cowboy shirt, and dark glasses, as well as the silver-tipped cane A.D. had bought him. “Three to five pictures a year, although I’ll tell you, L.A. feels like Detroit in the thirties. Nothing moving. Absolutely nothing. All they want are these thirty-million-dollar cartoons or some jerk-off soap that can’t get on without one of six stars who get two or three million guaranteed. It’s obscene. No one pays anyone and no one makes decisions. But you know all that bullshit. Tell me, Walk, what are you up to?”

  “I’m writing a script.”

  “It’s in your blood, that’s for sure. I’m still a big fan of your father’s, you know. I’ve heard the stories, of course.”

  “He’s in Mexico.”

  “Sensational,” Ben said. “He can work for me anytime. Tell him I love him and that he’s one of the real articles we have left in this rotten business. He’s a professional, not one of these amateur bimbos I seem to have to deal with all the time.” His eyes shifted to take in A.D. as he appeared by Walker’s side, looking unexpectedly sartorial in gray Giorgio Armani slacks and a black Pierre Cardin shirt with bone-white buttons. All highlighted by his black eye patch.

  “My producer,” Walker said, making the introductions.

  “You’re working with a first-class talent,” Ben said to A.D. “Join us in my suite and we’ll celebrate.”

  Walker tried to beg off but A.D. was insistent and the Oriental woman whose name turned out to be Rosie didn’t seem to mind one way or the other, and so they took the elevator up to Ben’s suite, which was furnished with a piano, winding staircase, pink velvet couches, ceiling-to-floor columns, and a three-foot television screen.

  “Now tell me about the project,” Ben said as the portly man helped him slip into a maroon smoking jacket and went off to make a round of Bloody Marys.

  “It’s a love story that takes place in India,” A.D. said, planting his feet on top of a glass coffee table. “A triangle between three Americans. Wesley is obsessed with it, especially as Walker is writing it. There is a lot of intensity between these two. I went down to New Mexico while he was shooting and talked to him about it, and it turns out that he’s always been fascinated by the East. When Walker showed up having been over there, well, you know, it was a natural.”

  “I love it,” Ben said. “It’s like the Fondas or John and Walter Huston going off to make The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. And of course there are all those frozen rupees in India just waiting for American investors. It makes sense, financially, creatively, emotionally. You can live like a maharaja. I did a little film once in Bali. It was never released, but it was one of the most satisfying trips in my entire life.”

  “Peaches and cream,” the blond girl said. “I’d love to go on a trip like that.”

  Ben patted her on the leg.

  The portly man, who appeared to be some sort of assistant, went over a side table behind the TV screen and made a series of intense phone calls. The blond girl asked Rosie if she had ev
er heard of a certain skin lotion she was now using, and Rosie shrugged and said she didn’t think so but that she had tried a lot of different lotions and she often found herself doing things and then not really remembering them.

  “Seriously,” Ben asked, “how is Wes? Everyone says he should check into the puzzle factory. I just hope it’s not his health.”

  “The script has given him a second life,” A.D. said. “He can’t wait to get into the saddle again. You can’t believe the ideas he comes up with.”

  “Money is hard these days,” Ben said. “Especially if you’re seventy years old and just fired off a film and your last three efforts have taken dives at the box office.”

  “The man’s a legend in his own time,” A.D. insisted.

  “No question about that.” Ben smiled at A.D. in a way that let him know he was under suspicion of being an amateur bimbo. “No doubt you have private financing already locked up. Hell, if Wesley pulled one off no one would applaud more than me. I trust you have a backup country if India doesn’t pan out?”

  “Mexico,” A.D. said. “Or some place like that.”

  “If you switch locations south of the border, come and see me. And Walker, I’m interested in the script. Especially if Wesley decides it’s time to write his memoirs. In fact, let’s get together when you get back to town. Say at the end of the week.”

  Walker said he would get in touch and then asked Rosie if she was ready to leave.

  “You’re welcome here,” A.D. said to her warmly.

  She looked from one to the other, weighing her needs, and then stood up next to Walker, who shook hands with Ben and clapped A.D. on the shoulder, telling him how much faith he had in him as a producer. Then he and Rosie took the elevator down to his room.

  Rosie kicked off her shoes and went straight to bed, sliding in between the sheets.

  “Do you want me?” she asked.

  “I think so,” Walker said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  She stared up at him with her hard weary eyes. “I might nod out on you if you don’t get it on soon. I’ve been working too hard. I need a vacation.”

  “I haven’t made it with anyone for a few years,” he confessed.

  “You must be a fag. Not that it makes any difference. I’m good with fags as long as they don’t get too emotionally weird on me.”

  “It’s not that. My wife died and I never got to it again.”

  “I’m the opposite,” she said. “When someone dies on me, I can’t get enough.”

  “I guess I’ve been shut down,” he said.

  “For two hundred dollars I’ll take care of your fear for the rest of the day. I can’t promise the night.”

  As he took off his clothes she noticed the bandage over his leg. “My producer shot me when I tried to run away,” he explained.

  “Film scum,” she said, as if she knew what she was talking about.

  He lay down on the bed but refrained from touching her. Staring at the ceiling, he said: “There’s a line in The African Queen when Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn are floating down this river and he says to her: ‘Pinch me, Rosie. Here we are, going down the river like Anthony and Cleopatra.’ ”

  “Do you feel we’re floating down a river?” she asked as her fingers reached over and caressed his cock.

  “In a way.”

  “Then why don’t you slide inside me so that you can get with the current.”

  Turning her over on her side, he entered into her. Holding her breasts and shutting his eyes, he remained very still, breathing evenly and smelling the faint perfume in her hair. When she finally responded, sighing and moving her hips, he stopped her, his hand pressing down on her thigh. They remained that way for several minutes, not moving, his breathing matching hers. His mind empty, he felt his blood roaring through him and a delicious agony invading his entire body. He passed through that and entered a quiet place, a calm that was soon replaced by fear as she started to move again and he felt he was going to explode, but she pulled herself in and the pressure in his throat and ears receded as she lay perfectly still. He had no idea who she was and in fact had no memory of her, even the color of her hair. She might have been asleep except that she was saying, “You’re on the money, honey. Hold it right there.” He held it right there while a great shaking sadness stole into him that began in his feet and swept up into his loins, and on the crest of that terrifying emptiness, he came.

  Rosie immediately fell asleep while Walker lay awake and thought of his wife for the first time since her death and the last time they had made love when she had been so freaked and lustful lying underneath him on the sandy soil somewhere in the middle of the scorched plains of India. Some clinging residue of the smell and taste of her enveloped him for a moment, and to stop thinking about her, he went over to the desk and began to write.

  DELHI. TRAIN STATION — MIDDAY . . . Jim and Lacey descend from the train carrying only one bag apiece. Stunned and dazed from the blistering heat, they walk slowly down the crowded platform. . . . A plump Indian in a white shirt and pale blue turban stands at the end of the platform with a sign: Jim and Lacey Rankin . . .“You are to please follow me,” he says, picking up their bags as they identify themselves. They follow him through the station and onto the street to an old white Chrysler sedan parked in back of a ricksha stand. The driver puts their bags in the trunk and opens the back door. . . . A blond, blue-eyed woman, large-boned and fleshy underneath a straw hat and yellow cotton dress, leans over from the backseat, one leg extended in a plaster cast. “Must excuse me,” she says in a high-pitched upper-class English accent. “Broke my foot falling off a horse. Humiliating. I’m Miranda Witherspoon. So glad. Terrible time. Not sure what train you were on, your telegram from Madras very vague. Your father called this morning all lathered up about your missing sister. Your father is a lion to work for. My husband, Charles, is quite terrified of him. I say, you’re traveling awfully light.”. . . Lacey explains that the rest of their bags were stolen on the train. . . . Miranda is outraged. “How ugly it’s all getting. There’s no point in traveling any more. It’s a defensive life now, at best. . . . But never mind. Everything can be replaced and it’s more amusing to have your clothes made for you here. One never brings the right things.”. . . The huge car slowly maneuvers through a side street as hands press against the window for alms. They turn into a wide boulevard, passing government buildings and then a row of fashionable hotels and villas set back from the road. Entering through an open iron gate, they park in front of a large nineteenth-century colonial house surrounded by flat well-clipped lawns and a variety of terraced flower gardens. Suddenly they are harbored inside a familiar world of comfort and control and they are glad to be there. . . . A uniformed servant opens the door and they follow Miranda as she hobbles inside. . . .

  TO THE INTERIOR . . . Charles Witherspoon, his taut athletic face full of concern and studied alertness, strides across the cool Cambodian tiles of the veranda, through the narrow glass doors, into the spacious Edwardian living room where they all stand waiting for him, servants offering glasses of sherry and elegant hors d’oeuvres. Charles wears white cotton slacks and a starched white shirt with pink collar and is all business and hysterical prep-school charm. . . .“Wonderful to finally see you. I’ll fill you in on your sister before your father’s call. That’s in a few hours. I’ve quite a sheet on her, but you’ll be relieved to know she’s okay. Just off on various pilgrimages here and there. Religious trips, mostly. A common enough ailment in this country. Right now she’s off in Benares or thereabouts, questing or seeking, I suppose you would say. But God, you probably want to change and have a bath before we get into all of that.”. . .

  INTERIOR . . . Their suite of rooms is modern and air-conditioned and looks out on the gardens and a flock of wandering peacocks. . . .“So that’s it,” Jim says, after they have each bathed and Jim is changing into his pants. “We’ll get drunk tonight and go back in the morning.”. . . Lacey has changed
into a blue sari that Miranda has loaned her and looks odd and strangely childlike. “I don’t see why we should go back. We’ve already put a lot into finding her. We’ve been drugged and robbed and molested, for god’s sake. Although once I knew they weren’t going to kill or rape us I leaned into it a little.”. . .“What do you mean, leaned into it?”. . .“Some part of me was stimulated.”. . . He looks at her as if she’s lost her mind. “Listen, Lacey, I’m not in good shape and I want to go home. My sister doesn’t need us. It’s obvious that she doesn’t want to be found. She’s never had the consideration to even send anyone a postcard. She’s been totally self-indulgent and I don’t see why I have to waste my life trying to find her, especially now that she’s off on a lark with some guru.”. . .“Aren’t you curious?” Lacey asks. . . .“Not really.”. . . But Lacey persists: “If you don’t have the energy to find her, how do you expect me to find you or you to find me?”. . . The question infuriates him: “Sweet Jesus. I can’t stand that kind of talk. I don’t want to find you. You don’t want to find me. In any case we’re right in front of each other.”. . .“Then maybe I should step off to the side, away from you, because I have no idea who I am around you.” . . . “Maybe you should,” he says, pulling back within himself. . . .

  INTERIOR . . . On that edge they descend to the garden, where Charles meets them inside a cool marble gazebo on the far side of the lawn. Jim asks after his father. . . .“He has called off the search for your sister,” Charles replies with a weary smile. “I spoke to him two days ago. Apparently she has written him a letter. He wouldn’t disclose the contents, but one must assume she’s well. He’s anxious to talk to you, of course.” He opens a large notebook bound in brown leather. “Let me start from that point where your sister left Madras, which is where your knowledge of her ends. She flew to Delhi and spent two and a half weeks at the Imperial Hotel. From there she took the train to Jaipur, where she stayed for over a month, keeping to herself and seeing no one. She took her meals in her room and every afternoon walked in the gardens of the hotel, which once belonged to a maharaja and which is all very grand. Four months later she turned up in Poona to study with Sri Iynagar, a renowned yoga teacher with an international reputation. Perhaps you know of him? Aside from regularly attending yoga classes, she underwent rigorous purification asanas, which involved fasting for a month and cleaning out her entire intestinal tract. After several months studying with Iynagar she met a French disciple of Bhagwan Sri Raj Neesh, a most radical and controversial teacher who was at that time living in Poona. Your sister and the Frenchman became lovers and she moved into his rented room in a large house near the ashram inhabited by other sannyasins. They listened to Bhagwan’s daily lectures and participated in several training courses or intensives on various meditation techniques, modern as well as traditional, such as primal therapy and vipassana. But your sister was never able to become a disciple of Bhagwan. Even though she wore orange, the prescribed color at the ashram, she refused to wear the mala over her neck with Bhagwan’s picture hanging from it. She and the Frenchman quarreled. He insisted that she surrender to Raj Neesh and she grew more stubborn in her refusals. Finally she left altogether and hired a car to take her to Bombay. She rented a suite of rooms in the Taj Mahal Hotel and made contact with Western students living in cheap hotels nearby who supplied her with opium and hashish. During this time she made two visits to Ganeshpuri to visit Swami Mucktananda’s ashram, a day’s drive from Bombay. Three months later she appears in Goa living with an American in a small house on the beach. He is known to the rather bizarre and anachronistic collection of Westerners living there as Jack the Smack, with a reputation for having supported himself exporting jewelry and religious objects to the West, mostly through smuggling. But I gathered that he and your sister were at first obsessively in love and never out of each other’s sight. But then she began to withdraw into herself, meditating or taking long aimless walks down the beach. Once she sat outside the house for a day and a half without moving and refused all efforts to communicate. Jack the Smack tried to ignore her and involved himself in the soft traffic of Goa hustles and pleasures. But one night her relentless self-absorption enraged him and he lost control, knocking her across the room where she fell against a chair and badly bruised her shoulder. They never spoke again and the next day she left. Two months later she showed up outside of New Delhi to attend a meditation camp run by a Burmese Buddhist monk. She had acute dysentery and the camp was very rough and primitive with fourteen hours of sitting meditation a day. But she survived, afterwards returning to Delhi and leaving immediately for Dharamsala in the north to visit a Tibetan refugee camp. While there, she took refuge with a Lama Yeshe and after studying with him for six months left for the Kulu valley in the foothills of the Himalayas, intending to do a year’s retreat. At first she lived in a cave, but was unable to adjust to the brutal conditions and moved to a small house, outside of a small town, with no heat or plumbing. After several weeks her health deteriorated, and she returned to Delhi to consult a doctor as well as Lama Yeshe, who had moved there with his family. I spoke to him a few days ago. Your sister stayed in Delhi for several months, and when she regained her health she went on a pilgrimage to Saranath, hoping to complete her prostrations. She is most likely there now.”. . . Charles looks up from his notebook, snapping it shut and pouring them martinis from a portable bar. “That sort of thing happens over here,” Charles says. “Exotic obsessions of deliverance which leave the mind strung out on deluded hope and the stomach full of parasites.”. . .