Memphis Movie

by Corey Mesler

  “Yes,” Dan said. “Take all your clothes off.”

  “Ok, Dan,” Ray said. “Lemme just check—”

  “Now. Right there.”

  Ray Verbely stopped in her tracks. She was about three yards inside her apartment.

  “Ok, Dan,” she said, and began an awkward striptease that Dan watched with only half interest.

  Ray Verbely, naked, was everything Dan had hoped. She was as pretty as a movie star.

  26.

  Rembert Street. Interior, lights low.

  Camel had read four pages of Memphis Movie. He sat back and puffed at his pipe.

  There was something there, something that clicked with him, something that turned an old tumbler. Inside Camel’s head letters began to line up as if for drill. Almost all 26 of them appeared, polished and ready for action. The ones missing he could do without. He’d done it before.

  Now words came. Old words. Words that led to other words. Words he thought he had left behind in San Francisco.

  Which reminded Camel of a song, but which song?

  Was it something he had heard in his youth, something his mother sang while she cooked for him and his father, frying, that’s what she did, she fried everything? What was it she sang? And his father, sitting there as if he had spent all his conversation in his youth and had none left for his child or wife. A sad man, a man beaten down by working all his life for Grace Chemical, adding figures for them as if without adding them up they couldn’t make their millions. Was he even listening to the song his wife sang?

  She sang all the time. Camel thought she was writing her own songs.

  Lorax, as if channeling Camel’s dead and now-dream-bidden mother, walked about the house singing also, little Sibyl songs.

  Fido followed her if she were piping him to and fro. Fido had taken to Lorax like a peri to Queen Mab.

  Once Camel had written a song—collaborated, really—with Grace Slick, a song that never made it onto an album but did appear on a European bootleg of the Airplane live. Those were good days.

  Why was that the only song he had written? Surely, he had other songs in him.

  Perhaps even now.

  You’re never too old to write a song.

  Perhaps he should try to write a new song. He could call Ardent and see who’s still hanging around there; maybe all the old guys weren’t gone. Maybe Buddy could help him.

  Buddy was dead. That was a hard truth.

  They were all dead, all Camel’s old crowd. And Allen. She was even deader.

  She died on Camel.

  She left him bereft.

  Camel sat and cried quiet tears.

  He couldn’t write a song. He couldn’t write a movie script. And he couldn’t bring Allen back. Every bit of his magic had gone the way of all flesh. Is anything sadder than exhausted magic?

  Lorax watched sleepily from the couch as Camel cried.

  “Hey, hey, Camel,” she said from her dreams. “What is it, Baby?”

  Camel looked at her with thousands of years of heartbreaking shortfall. He looked at her the way Father Time looks at Death, when Death shows up fresh-shaven and natty at the party, carrying a bouquet of black roses and grinning like Youth Rampant.

  “What is it, Camel? Can Lorax do anything for you?”

  Camel thought about the thing that they had just done. He had almost not been able to complete the transaction. His body, like his soul, had lived too many lifetimes.

  “It’s ok, Sweet,” Camel said, at last. “I need to lie down, I think. My head is full of locusts.”

  Lorax smiled a teen imp’s sempiternal smile. It was the prettiest thing Camel had ever seen.

  “But, first, you know,” Camel said, hesitantly, “I think I’m gonna help these poor movie folks and their raggedy script. I think I have just the right words to help them.”

  And Camel smiled, too.

  27.

  When Eric saw Jimbo Cole bouncing on his doorstep like a dog anxious for its walk, Eric’s heart sank a bit lower. This was what his career had led him to, a reunion with a friend he was not friends with, in a city where he had never been comfortable.

  “Hey, Buddy,” Jimbo said. “Where next?”

  “Listen, Jimbo, we gotta meet with Ricky Lime. Do you know where the Ornamental Metal Museum is?”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course. You know every time I go there I make that wrong turn that takes you across the bridge into Arkansas, no way off, gotta go all the way across the bridge and turn around. Every damn time.”

  “Ok, so, that’s where we’re meeting Ricky.”

  “Ok, sure, let’s go.” There was a hesitation. “Who’s Ricky Lime?”

  “The still photographer.”

  “Right. Eggleston’s son.”

  “No.” Eric could almost not summon the energy for discussion.

  “No, not Eggleston’s son,” he finished.

  “Ok, great, let’s go.”

  The drive there was part silence, part uncomfortable rehashing of the past. Eric and Jimbo had had some unfortunate head-buttings, involving Jimbo’s relentless pursuit of any female that Eric had the fortune of accompanying. Jimbo’s dick-measuring contests were almost comical. All in the guise of friendship. They had led, of course, to a split.

  “You know, after she ratted on me—I mean the one girlfriend of yours I didn’t sleep with—after she said I hit on her and you exploded on me. And rightly so, rightly so, I’m not saying. Anyway, after that, I really felt the loss of our friendship. I blamed myself totally. I mean it. I just saw it all for the first time, what I was doing wrong, you know?”

  Eric didn’t even remember the incident. How could it matter now?

  And yet it did, if only to Jimbo.

  “What’s that?” Eric asked as they drifted through downtown Memphis.

  “New entertainment plaza, or, what’s the word? New entertainment extravaganza. No, that’s not it, anyway, Peabody Place, movie theaters, mall, bowling alley. You know?”

  Eric didn’t. But it didn’t matter.

  Downtown had changed considerably; it almost sparkled. Eric imagined it was the NBA team and its new downtown arena, the FedEx Forum. A mammoth mushroom that had sprung up from the decomposing soil south of Beale Street, swallowing all the surrounding housing projects and cheap grocery stores. It looked like a spaceship. A space mushroom. Something alien.

  And there were tourists everywhere. Eric imagined that his entire cast wandered among the crowds, sparkling too, signing autographs, smiling Hollywood smiles, getting back that energy stars crave and hate, the fan adoration.

  Eric hated his business. He hated the movies.

  Ricky Lime was standing on an Indian burial mound looking at the river. He didn’t even turn as Eric and Jimbo approached. He had circles under his eyes like thumbprints of pitch, as black as Vulcan in the smoke of war. His voice was floating, detached.

  “You know, this river, think about it: it’s older than anyone alive. It’s as old as the universe. And it still has such—vigor. Think about it,” Ricky Lime said.

  “So, Ricky, show me what you’ve got,” Eric said. He was busy. This was business.

  “What I’ve got,” Lime said, pulling his gaze away from Big Muddy, “what I’ve got is proof of life after death. A dark truth. I set out to frame the look of your film and I got proof of life after death. Now, what are we going to do about it?”

  Eric sighed. He tried to hold Ricky Lime’s eye but had to look away. It was like falling into a well.

  “Look, Lime,” Eric said. “I have to have what you’ve shot. Ghost and all. Ok? I have to have it now and I have to have your commitment to this project. Not to some Uri Geller fantasy. Ok? You with me or not?”

  Ricky Lime looked like he was going to cry. His face crumpled like a rejected page of prose.

  “Sure, Eric. Sure. I just wanna do my job.”

  “Ok, then. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, you and I and Rica will take some time to sit down and talk about the location shooting.
Ok? It’s at the Pyramid tomorrow. Early. 7 a.m. Ok?”

  “Yes, of course, Eric,” Ricky said, clearing his throat.

  “Good. Ok, now why are we here at the museum?”

  “I wanted to show you—that is, this, well, here’s the picture.”

  It was a picture taken inside the actual smithy shop at the museum. In Eric’s film something mysterious happens in this shop, something involving sparks off the anvil. Something that leads Dan’s character to suspect that Suze Everingham’s character is hiding something behind her private school teacher’s prim demeanor. The something hadn’t been decided yet. That is, the script stalled at the doorjamb of the mystery.

  “This is a nice shot, Lime. Nice. The murky atmosphere like some infernal workshop where Old Scratch forms his army of darkness,” Eric said, holding the picture above his head to catch the right light.

  “Yes!” Lime’s face was contorted into Dwight Frye–level dementia. “Yes, my God help me. You see it!”

  Eric pulled back. He thought the photographer might be rabid.

  “What the hell—”

  “In the picture. There in the shadows—my God, look!”

  Eric squinted at the picture. There was something there, a murky form.

  “What—what is it?”

  “See him!” Lime nearly exploded.

  It was just a shadow, probably. Eric lowered the picture and handed it to Jimbo, who mimicked Eric’s way of seeing the photo clearly.

  “It’s just a shadow, probably. The smithy’s shadow,” Eric said.

  “It’s a shadow that looks just like Satan,” Jimbo Cole said.

  28.

  Exterior. Long shot.

  The sun was sinking into the river. The river was the color of a rotting tangerine.

  Eric’s cell phone was suddenly full of messages again.

  The first one was from Eden Forbes.

  “Eric, how the hell are you? How’s our movie? You get that writer I suggested?”

  This was phatic conversation. Eric didn’t feel bound to answer literally.

  “Everything’s ok,” he said.

  “Good, good,” Eden said.

  “I’m gonna be working with Hope Davis tonight and then to bed early. We’re starting at the Pyramid tomorrow at 7.”

  There was silence.

  “Eden, that’s it,” Eric said.

  “Sorry, sorry, Eric. I was listening on the other line to my wife. Ok, Buddy, lemme know how the new pages look. And, Eric.”

  Eric knew his line.

  “Yes, Eden?”

  “You call me if you need anything. Got it?”

  “Yes, Eden, thanks.”

  Sandy had called, too. No message. She knew he would call back.

  “Hey, Baby, how you doing?”

  “Great, Cabbage. Where are you? Did you see Lime’s ghosts?”

  “Yes, yes. We’re down by the river. Lime’s taken off. I think I’m gonna kick his new age ass. He’s got Jimbo worked up now.”

  “When is Jimbo not worked up? Listen, about tonight. You go. Don’t worry about me. I was being bitchy earlier. You go and run lines with Hope. Call me if you need any clarification. Though you know the script as well as I do.”

  “Have you written more? Gotten any closer to a denouement? Is this movie gonna have an ending?”

  “It will, Cabbage. It will end when and how it’s supposed to.”

  “Ok, Sweet. I got a call here from Camel, I see. I’m betting we’re gonna have to go elsewhere for our local funk. At short notice I don’t really know which direction to go. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”

  “Ok, Scarlett.”

  “Ok—” Eric heard hesitation.

  “Oh, and Cabbage.”

  “Yes, Sweet.”

  “I love you,” Sandy said.

  “I love you, too, Baby.”

  Eric called Camel and that stray picked up. Her name? Lorraine?

  “Hey,” her sleepy voice said. “This is Camel’s house but this isn’t Camel.”

  “Hi, this is Eric Warberg. Is Camel available?”

  “Hi, Eric, it’s Lorax.”

  Lorax. Right.

  “Hi, can you put Camel on?”

  There was a snuffling laughter coming through now. The sound a puppy might make wagging its tail in a silk dressing gown.

  “Lorax?” Eric said eventually.

  “I’m not putting Camel on,” she said, giggling.

  “I don’t—” Then Eric saw the joke. “Oh, ha, yes, I’m sure you wouldn’t. Ahem, can you give Camel the phone?”

  There was a sort of silence. He could hear music. He thought it was the Doors.

  “Hey, Eric,” Camel said.

  “Hey, Camel. Am I disturbing you?”

  “No, no, man, I’m in the bathroom.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said. He hated disgusting images. They played havoc with his personal well-being. They played hell with his visual dictionary, the library he kept in his head of useful, meaningful images, from which his movies came. Also, he didn’t trust his body and hated imagining anyone else’s personal eructation and necessaries.

  “No, I’m not, you know, number twoing or anything. At least I don’t think I am. I am—”

  Again that soft-edged silence.

  “I sit in here to write. That is, I used to. So, I thought if I was gonna write again, I should try it in here. It’s quite a happy space, you know? The colors are nice, the chrome of the pipes, the smell of recently used soap.”

  “Listen, Camel, if this is too much for you—”

  “Movie Man,” Camel said with a sense of urgency. It brought Eric up short. He prepared himself for something from left of left field.

  “I’ve written you some damn good dialogue.”

  “Camel, that’s wonderful.”

  “Can you gimme a few hours? I’m thinking I can write all night here and have something near to what you’re looking for.”

  This was so unexpected Eric didn’t know what to say. Camel lucid was the Camel of old, creative, energetic, amusing. Eric’s gratitude made him feel blubbery, blurry at the edges.

  “Camel, you’re a prize. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Ok, Craig.”

  Eric called Mimsy Borogoves. She whispered whispery endearments. He invited her to the 7 a.m. shoot at the Pyramid and she said that she would be there.

  He talked to Rica Sash, who assured him that he had a visual style that Eric was going to love. “Yes,” he said, “I can work with your photographer’s images.”

  Eric took a call from Ike Bana and one from Suze Everingham. Both only wanted assurances that the movie would begin shooting tomorrow. Not having ever worked with either actor before, Eric was a little on edge. He felt challenged somehow by Ike’s aggressive manner. Did he have to assert so early that he was in charge?

  Suze Everingham, however, sounded warm and friendly. She was about to break big this year, with two already acclaimed independent films being released just about simultaneously. There was already Oscar buzz about her. Eric only knew that she was as sexy as a flame. She was bicycling, Eric knew, shooting a movie with Miranda July simultaneously with his.

  Suze Everingham had a funny/sexy persona on screen, a blonde Sarah Silverman, with that same kind of killer body. Eric was anxious to work with her and the part Sandy had written her was key, a real plum role. “This part,” Sandy had said, “this is our Independent Spirit Award for Supporting Actress.”

  Eric had no call from Dan Yumont so he checked in with his wayward star.

  The phone rang a dozen times. The rings sounded tired.

  “Go,” Dan said when he picked up.

  “Hey, Dan. Just wanted to make sure you had everything you needed. You need a wake-up call, a limo in the morning?”

  “Eric!” Dan howled. He sounded coked to the gills. Maybe even beyond the gills. “Man, I’ll be there. I’m gonna walk, Buddy. Shit, the Peabody is in the Pyramid’s backyard.”

  Eric didn’t
like the sound of this. It was walkable, of course, but he didn’t think it was safe to have his star on the street. Maybe at 7 a.m. it would be ok.

  “Ok,” Eric said. “You did check into your room, then?”

  “Not yet, my man. I am about to. I might need to crash early.”

  “Ok. Um, where are you? Do you need someone to come get you?”

  Dan Yumont didn’t rightly know where he was. Somewhere near the college.

  “See you in the a.m.,” he sang out.

  “Ok, Dan,” Eric said.

  He had a bad feeling about Dan Yumont. The insurance policy on him was a pain, an expense that Eden Forbes balked at initially. Then relented. Eden Forbes knew Dan Yumont was the ticket, the money. The policy stipulated daily drug tests. Eric hoped they didn’t follow through on that.

  29.

  Eric was nervous about meeting with Hope Davis. He felt as if he were dressing for a date, as if he were a high school swain with a crush on a cheerleader. Luckily, Sandy had vacated the premises prior to Eric’s preparations. God knows where she went.

  She missed him putting baby powder in his underwear. She missed the extra deodorant, a swipe down his sternum to his pubes. She missed the cherry Binaca.

  “Goddamn fool,” Eric said to the mirror. He wore a T-shirt that read, THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE ADVERTISED ON T-SHIRTS. And an expensive sport coat. Urban chic.

  When he knocked on the door to Hope’s suite, his heart answered the brief tattoo of his fist. She opened right away and Eric was caught in mid–deep breath.

  “H-hi,” he managed.

  “Come in,” she said, stepping gracefully back. Her face, so luminous on the screen, was more luminous in real life.

  Who builds his Hope in the air of your faire looks, lives like a drunken sailor on a mast.

  “I can’t believe we’ve never worked together. Never even crossed paths,” Eric said, entering.

  “I know, isn’t that strange? And we’re both so—Hollywood?” She tinkled a laugh. It was golden.

  “Yes,” Eric said.

  “I loved Spondulicks, by the way,” Hope Davis said.

  “Oh, Christ. Only you.” Eric groaned.