Memphis Movie

by Corey Mesler

“Y-yes,” she said. Her voice was throatier than one would have imagined. “Chemistry,” she repeated.

  “Yes,” Dan said and smiled.

  “It’s behind us, over that way.”

  “Hm, I’m new—I don’t—”

  “Fuck me,” Friend Right said.

  Everyone turned to her.

  “This is fucking Dan Yumont. You are, aren’t you?”

  Dan looked at the blonde. And then—he squinted.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  “I’m Trudy,” Friend Right said and stuck out her hand. “Pardon my Franco.”

  “Hello, Trudy,” Dan said, taking her hand and never letting his gaze fall away from the angel’s face.

  “I’m Ray,” the angel spoke. “Ray Verbely.”

  “Ray Verbely,” Dan Yumont said.

  Friends Right and Left cowered. The energy level approached the red zone.

  “Will you take me to lunch?” Dan asked.

  Ray Verbely spoke as if ensorcelled. “Of course I will,” she said.

  “Wonderful,” Dan Yumont said and he slipped an arm around her waist.

  21.

  The call from Eden Forbes came as Eric and Mimsy were leaving Gus’s Fried Chicken.

  “Excuse me,” Eric said to Mimsy. “Gotta take this one.”

  Mimsy smiled and walked a few paces down South Main. It was still a fairly bleak area.

  “Hi, Eden,” Eric said.

  “Eric! I hear you’re taking a day off!”

  “Yes, I did. I needed to talk to the Memphis writer you wanted to bring aboard.”

  “I love nautical metaphors,” Eden said. There was a pause and Eric thought he was supposed to speak. Then Eden said, “So, how is that working out? This writer you talked to—can he deliver the goods?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good, good. Throw money at him if you need to. Hammer it home to him that we want funk, right? Memphis funk?”

  “Yes, Eden.”

  “Good, good. Listen, I was fiddling around last night with the opening credits.”

  Eric was stunned into silence.

  “How’s this sound and I’m just roughing it out here so, you know, we can spitball. Like this: An Eden Forbes Production, in association with William Pilgrim Pictures and Chair Ass Productions, a Big Rear Crew Movie brought to you by Oust Berserk Book Pictures, a subsidiary of God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot Productions, a Thespis Slam Dunk Movie. How’s that sound to you?”

  “I’m speechless. Except to say that we haven’t started shooting yet.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, I’m just excited from my end and wanted to line up the ducks, so to speak. I think I got everyone in there, and elegantly, too.”

  Eric didn’t know who these mysterious production companies were except for Big Rear Crew, which was his and Sandy’s company.

  “As long as we don’t say based upon,” Eric said, sardonically.

  “Wha—”

  It was Eric’s contention that any movie that began “Based upon” rather than “Based on” was off to an unlucky and pretentious start, as in “Based upon Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada . . .” Moviemakers that say upon probably don’t read real books.

  “All good, Eden. Got to get going here.”

  “Right, right. You are gonna start rolling some film, right?”

  “Yep. Second unit has already begun. Gotta get a few” (here he almost said “ducks in a row” but caught the repetition quickly) “things done first.”

  “Yes, yes. You know moviemaking. I trust you’re doing the right thing.”

  “Thanks, Eden.”

  After he hung up Eric scanned the sidewalk. About 50 yards away Mimsy was talking to a black guy with pants around his thighs and a jailhouse rag on his head.

  Eric hustled toward her.

  “Mimsy—sorry,” he began.

  The black guy gave him a quick once-over.

  “Eric, this is Sean Meezen,” Mimsy said. “He worked on Hustle and Flow.”

  “Oh, nice to meet you,” Eric stuck a hand out, tentatively, unsure whether he would meet a soul brother, a businessman or a fist. Movie people everywhere, he thought. He might as well be back on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  “Mimsy was a big help to me. She put me on the path. You thought I was a street tough raggin’ on your lady,” Sean said. He shook hands in a straightforward way.

  “No, no—” Eric tried to regroup. “I’m from Memphis,” he added.

  “Oh, ha, then you’re practically black!” Sean said.

  They all laughed. It was like a little cloud of noise underneath the thin Memphis sunshine in the middle of a crumbling downtown street.

  As they headed back to the car Mimsy slipped her hand into Eric’s.

  Eric’s body reacted. His libido was drinking milk.

  22.

  Camel laid out his medicaments.

  On the glass-top coffee table he had a little Thai stick, some Mississippi Thunder Weed (a gift from Ernie Abel, Camel’s postman), some Alabama Slamma, bubble bags of hash (German and Middle Eastern, some Maui Wowie, and a small amount of Amsterdam Uitbarsting). He was preparing his tools to begin the arduous process of plumbing the ether for words, for magic words. It was an old ritual but one he hadn’t practiced in over a decade. His tools—his mental tools—were rusted.

  Lorax, still with sleep locusts in her head, sat on the couch watching the ceremony. She wore panties and the blanket she had slept in, wrapped around her Native American–style.

  She thought about smiling. Smiling seemed like a good idea. She would hold it in abeyance. Soon, she would smile.

  Camel looked over his paraphernalia and thought that it was good. It was meet and right.

  He sat back and opened Sandy’s script to page one.

  He brought his full concentration to the page. And he read.

  Ten pages later he looked up.

  Lorax tried that long-dreamt-of smile.

  “It’s not very good,” Camel said to Lorax.

  “I’m sorry, Baby,” the teenager said.

  “Furthermore, I’m not very good. I have no words left. I used to have words but now I am bereft. I am wordless.”

  “I’m hungry,” Lorax said.

  Camel smiled at his houseguest. “Go find some food,” he said.

  He meant for her to begin the quest at, say, Piggly Wiggly.

  Instead she headed for the kitchen where there hadn’t been food since Abbie Hoffman cooked Minute Rice in there. Except for a counter stacked with vegetables.

  Fido, for one, was tired of brown rice and vegetables. He longed for a little piece of ham, a little twist of bacon.

  Camel watched Lorax walk by him. He thought about her breasts, which were lovely, in a young body sort of way. Lovely like beach sand early in the morning before the children come with their pails and castle-dreams.

  “There’s no food out here,” Lorax said. “And Fido is hungry.”

  “I know,” Camel said. He thought about reading another page. Instead he lit a pipe and sat back to gather moths.

  Reenter Lorax.

  “What should we do?” she asked. She truly thought it a metaphysical puzzle.

  Camel just smiled his Buddha smile.

  “I guess we could ball instead,” Lorax said, scratching her decorated belly.

  Camel thought, yes, perhaps that would be best. Script doctoring be damned. There were more pressing needs and one of them was the wiggle in his willy.

  “Come here, Sweetheart,” Camel said.

  23.

  Eric emerged from Mimsy Borogoves’s bed newly washed in emotional well-being. He knew, briefly, the secrets of the universe, a flash-knowledge only, a presque-vu.

  And when he stepped outside, after tender goodbyes and soft kisses, the sunshine was like balm to him. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Suddenly, and for the first time, he thought, I have come home. And I have come home for one reason only, to make the best damn movie I have ever made.

  His
cell rang.

  “It really is him,” Ricky Lime said. “It’s clearer in the ones I took last night.”

  “Ok, Ricky. Good. Let’s get together—uh—later tonight—and we’ll see what’s what,” Eric said.

  “I’ve got a swimming pool for you,” Jimbo sang into the phone. “It is THE swimming pool, I’m telling you. It looks like it was designed for Sandy’s script. I’m not kidding.”

  “Ok, Jimbo—uh, pick me up at the house in about an hour.”

  “Right, Chief,” Jimbo said.

  Chief.

  “Did you get my fax?” Eden said.

  “Uh, no, I haven’t been—”

  “Jesus, boy. I got it all laid out. I’m working my ass off here. I expect you to be, too.”

  “Right, Eden. I’m heading home now. I’ll get it in five minutes.”

  “Tell that driver to make it in three,” Eden said, with a laugh as phony as Shirley Temple’s Oscar.

  “Right,” Eric said. He didn’t want to tell Eden why he thought it was better to rent a car for the day.

  “Eric.” Hope Davis’s purr came through the phone with some heat.

  “Hope!” Eric crowed. “I was just thinking about you. Everything ok?”

  “Yes, yes, I was wondering if you and Sandy could run some lines with me tonight. I’m a bit unclear on a couple of scenes, where I’m going. If I don’t know where the character is going I can’t, you know, do her in the present.”

  “Of course, Dear,” Eric said. He didn’t tell her that the script wasn’t finished. “Let’s get together tonight, say, around dinner?”

  “Ok. You wanna come here?”

  “Yes, let’s do that. Have some food sent up maybe.”

  “Yes. Ok, thanks, Eric.”

  “Ok, Love.”

  Oh my God, Eric thought. I just called her Love. I called Hope Davis Love.

  Still, he hoped that Sandy would be tied up tonight and that he and Hope Davis would have the evening to themselves.

  Because—

  He didn’t know why. He had been in love with Hope Davis for ten years, ever since he saw The Daytrippers. He wanted her—talent—for his films. But, he had to be honest with himself—he wanted more than that. Just what was hard to say. And now there was Mimsy Borogoves, whose pale, rose-colored skin still hummed in his hands. He could still feel her on his palms. And the things she whispered to him, the magic things, things most sentient beings are unaware of. He was born again in her bed. And THAT was something that he could tell no one.

  24.

  “Hope Davis wants to run lines tonight. She says she’s not clear on the direction her character is going.”

  “Well, that makes sense since we don’t know.”

  “Yes. I didn’t tell her that.”

  “Smart Cabbage.”

  “Can you make it?”

  “What—tonight?”

  “Yes, can you come with us?” Eric’s voice stuck briefly.

  “Does Cabbage want to run with Hope by himself? Does he want to run away with Hope perhaps? Run with Hope. Not a bad title,” Sandy said, and tapped it into her laptop in a file marked simply, “Notes.”

  “I don’t care either way,” Eric said. And suddenly he didn’t. It was all too much. The rosy glow he had picked up from Mimsy Borogoves was beginning to corrode at the edges.

  “Oh, c’mon, talk to me.”

  “I really don’t care,” Eric said, with more conviction.

  “Ok.” Sandy bent back toward her keyboard.

  Eric stood uncertainly in the middle of the room for a minute.

  “Hey, did a fax come?” he asked.

  “Yes. From Eden.”

  Eric found it on the end table. It was the opening credits just as he had read them over the phone, it seemed. Then Eric saw the small difference. Big Rear Crew had been replaced by something called Worm Credit Pictures. What the hell was Worm Credit? What did this mean? And, further, did Eric have the wherewithal or the balls to challenge it? Did he even care? All he wanted to do was make a movie.

  “Apparently,” Eric said, “Our production company has been dropped from the picture.”

  Sandy held up a finger.

  “I’m working here,” she said.

  Fuck her, Eric said to himself. Suddenly, he was enraged. An ancient anger welled in him. On his way to the bedroom he glanced back at Sandy. Her screen was open to gmail. She was answering her fucking email, he realized.

  Script? What script?

  In the bedroom he sat on the bed and took out his cell.

  He dialed Mimsy’s number.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “You sound blue. That’s not much of a compliment.”

  “Mimsy Borogoves, I don’t know where you came from. But you’re about the best damn thing that’s happened to me in my return home. The only good thing, I should say.”

  “That’s better.”

  “Well—”

  “What is it, Eric? Tell me.”

  “This movie. I can’t do it.”

  “Are you being serious? Aren’t there like gargantuan machinations—like large semi-trucks full of equipment and Oompa Loompas—already in place so that you can’t not do it?”

  “Yes. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s what trumps. Money trumps. You know what Dorothy Parker said about Hollywood? She said, ‘Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand and there you are.’”

  “Only hundreds of thousands?” Mimsy sounded disappointed.

  “Yes. Disappointing, eh? My last film’s budget was 20 million.”

  “Oh, Eric. Is that it? Just the detritus of that failure?”

  “No, no, it’s—”

  Eric realized he didn’t know what it was. It was that failure. But it was Memphis, too. It was returning to Memphis with a moribund relationship—one that was hopelessly entangled with his business—and no real story to film. The only thing they really had was the idea to make their movie in Memphis. It sounded like genius at the time.

  “It’s Memphis,” Mimsy said.

  Her prescience scared him a bit.

  She said, “Memphis is like that. The city you can’t shake. The one you return to and nothing has changed. Though you’ve gone through massive changes, the city treats you the same and you try to act like you’re the same. It’s a subtle form of torment.”

  “Mimsy, how do you know this? One so young as you?”

  “I’ve seen it, Love. I’ve paid attention.”

  She called him Love.

  “Can you come to me now?”

  “Eric, where’s Sandy?”

  “She’s in the next room emailing her lover.”

  “I see.”

  There was a frozen silence, one packed in dry ice.

  “Never mind,” Eric said. “I have things to do, strings to tie together. Lots of messy strings. This is my job—I’m a knitter, not a director.”

  “You’re making a movie.”

  “Yes. Mimsy, I am. I’m making this movie.”

  They hung up with a few inchoate endearments.

  His cell rang immediately.

  “Love, can you come get me?”

  Eric was temporarily staggered. It took him a moment to realize it was not Mimsy’s voice. He couldn’t figure out whose voice it was.

  “Um, I—I’m busy here,” he stalled.

  “Eric, you mooncalf, it’s Kim.”

  “Hello, Kim.”

  “Eric, Love, can we get together? I sorta am aching for you.”

  “Kim, what are you talking about? I’m here with Sandy.”

  “Eric, I know about Sandy. C’mon, it’s Kimberly. Talk real to me. Be real.”

  “Real?” Eric’s anger began to simmer again. “Ok, real. Let’s see. I’m trying to pull this fucking movie together. I’ve got actors running around all over town, not one of them reading the script. I’ve got a script that is unfinished, perhaps unfinishable, that a burnt-out hippie is
supposed to save. I’ve got the money men squeezing me. And then I’ve got you. My ex-lover who left me without explanation, without even a glance back. And now she’s a day player. A bit player in the movie and in my life. Ok? that real enough?”

  “Fuck you,” Kimberly Winks said. “Fuck you, and your big head and your big dead movie.”

  That, thought Eric, was real. That was how it was supposed to go. That was following the script. At least I have Hope, he thought. And he laughed a fairly cheerless laugh.

  25.

  Dan Yumont had not really wanted lunch. He only wanted to take Ray Verbely to some place semi-private and remove her clothing. Ray Verbely looked like she desired to have her clothes taken off, as if her clothes were the chrysalis she needed to shed. Her body moved about underneath that fabric like a snake’s, a sexy snake.

  Ray ordered a salad. Dan ordered a salad, too, with steak on it.

  They were sitting in a bar-restaurant near the university campus. They were surrounded by the Greeks and the jocks and the people who pass for glitterati in college. Ray was trying to show Dan Yumont that she had some eminence also, that she had her own set of fans.

  Dan couldn’t have cared less. It was all he could do to make small talk.

  “I loved you in Evil Going On,” she was saying now. Dan’s eyes were weak slits. He was weary.

  “Thanks,” he said, and moved a piece of steak deeper into the bowl, obscuring it with greenery.

  “You were so . . .” Ray was searching for a word. Dan was betting she wouldn’t hit it.

  “So mean,” she finished.

  Dan smiled.

  “And in The Tin Woodman Objects. You were so different in that. So . . .” Again the search began.

  “Mean?” Dan asked.

  “No, just the opposite. Um, you know, sweet. How do you do that? Be two different people?”

  Honey, you have no idea, he thought.

  “Listen,” Dan said, after waiting for Ray to eat half her salad, “you’re very pretty.”

  Ray Verbely was taken aback.

  “Thanks, Dan,” she said, falling a little in love with him.

  “You wanna fuck a movie star?”

  Once they were inside Ray’s apartment, itself close to the campus, Dan Yumont began unbuckling his belt.

  “You’re really needy, aren’t you?” Ray Verbely trilled. She was nervous.