Memphis Movie

by Corey Mesler

  “You don’t believe in her story.”

  “There is no story! That’s the dirty secret. There is no story. And I think the actors sense it. I think that’s what sweet Hope Davis was getting at by inviting me to read with her. She knows there’s nothing there.”

  They sat in smoldering silence while some elaborate plates of food were set before them. Eric looked at his fish as if it were a work of modernist art that he couldn’t comprehend. Mimsy pushed her plate aside and put her elbows on the table. She leaned toward Eric.

  “What can we do?” she asked.

  They wound up at Mimsy’s apartment, on her bed, which was as large as an inland sea. There was a TV at the foot of the bed, lending the room a sort of hotel suite quality.

  They had kicked off their shoes and slithered downward onto the coverlet. They had eaten too much.

  “What’s on TV?” Eric asked, propped up on pillows.

  “Let’s see. A lot of bad movies. Cheese factor five.”

  “For instance?”

  “Well, I mean, I’m going on stars, though I hesitate to say, seeing as how you might know these folks and/or have worked with them.”

  “Talk to me,” Eric said.

  “Well, you know, certain actors, actresses, you don’t really have to check into the movie; they raise the cheese factor by name alone. Jeff Fahey.”

  “He’s a good friend.”

  “Oh, shit—see—”

  “I’m kidding. Yes, Fahey’s cheese factor is high.”

  “Any of the Love Boat crew, or Charlie’s Angels. Connie Sellecca, Dean Cain, Billy Zane, uh, Richard Grieco, Shannen Doherty naturally, Lorenzo Lamas, Christopher Lambert—almost anything on the Lifetime Channel.”

  “Uh—Tom Wopat—”

  “Obviously.”

  “Ken Wahl. Yasmine Bleeth.”

  “Yes! . . . Sybil Danning, Sean Young, mostly, Michael Landon.”

  “Little Joe!”

  “Ok, maybe we shouldn’t play this game.”

  “Well, I get it, anyway. What’s really on?”

  “Hm, here’s something that may make your head explode. L’eclisse is on Sundance, opposite a Shannon Tweed thriller.”

  “Ha. Let’s watch both.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Flip back and forth.”

  “Our heads might explode. There. There you go.”

  “I’ve had a crush on Monica Vitti ever since—”

  “The spy spoof—”

  “Yes! She was Modesty Blaise! And I met her once. This was back in . . . whenever. I wanted to cast her as Magda in Cracker Hobgoblin.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Studio wanted—”

  “Huh.”

  “Monica Vitti’s smile.”

  “Yes, a wonderful smile.”

  “Monica Vitti’s smile is totemic, like the light behind Tuesday Weld’s hair in Play It as It Lays, or Cary Grant’s cool . . . And her laugh, it’s infectious. She’s lit from within. And those Antonioni silences. They seem to go on for weeks, the attenuated silence between people.”

  “Here.”

  “That was an abrupt segue.”

  “Let’s hear you wax poetic about Shannon Tweed’s dimpled chin.”

  “Ha. I’m pretty sure she’s a man.”

  “Except for those.”

  “Yes.”

  “You see a lot of those.”

  “Well, that’s her calling card. This isn’t Pinter.”

  “These Tweed thrillers. They’re teases, mostly.”

  “You’ve studied them?”

  “Well, hell, there seems to be one on at all hours of the night. And I know all hours of the night. The education of the insomniac.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, these sex thrillers, they take you up to the moment, time and time again, and let you down. Frustrating.”

  “Antonioni is sexier.”

  “Probably.”

  “Though, well, that is pretty sexy.”

  “Well . . .”

  Eric placed his hand on the inside of Mimsy’s thigh. On the screen Shannon Tweed’s panties, so white between her legs, were being kneaded by her hunk’s hand.

  “Get it, girl,” Mimsy said.

  Eric’s pinkie moved to the middle space where it was soft and warm. Mimsy Borogoves spread her legs wide.

  “Turn it back to L’eclisse and take me,” she said.

  33.

  Meanwhile, Dan Yumont was holding the hand of his teenage conquest as they stood in the parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart, leaning against Dan’s rental car. Across a ragged field they could see the twin screens of a drive-in. Simultaneously they could watch either Bruce Willis or Dan himself in Jackpot Jeopardy!

  “So, anyway, I thought, you know, that you might be mad at me for today, for almost breaking into the set, for disturbing the filming and all, but, really, it didn’t seem like you all were doing anything, just sitting around, and I know that maybe the part you said they’d give me might not even be written yet, she seems like a bitch, the writer, I hope she’s not a friend of yours but she didn’t seem all that friendly to me, but, then I thought, maybe I should make myself available so it could all proceed, you know? So that they could get a look at me and know what I can do, you know, Danny? I didn’t do wrong, did I?”

  Dan Yumont squinted.

  Cicadas in the trees at the edge of the macadam played a Ravi Shankar tune.

  In Jackpot Jeopardy! Dan was holding a gun the size of a waffle iron. He was squinting there, too. Bad guys were squinting back at him but, really, their squints were overshadowed by Dan’s more formidable squint. The camera closed in on Dan’s eyes.

  “Don’t call me Danny,” he said, at last.

  It had been a long day on set. They had quit after 6 and, for Dan, that meant a whole day without his personal freedom. He was 45 years old, still in great shape, but he didn’t suffer fools any longer and he didn’t let much stand in the way of drinking and fucking. This was his code as near as it could be articulated.

  But, he was also a professional actor and that had its responsibilities. Though he had box office clout like few male stars of his generation he was still a craftsman, a perfectionist. Though it came easy to him he still took it very seriously. This was part of his mystique, of course, the ability to create such memorable performances in the midst of such a messy life.

  Dudu was stung. She bit her lip and lay back on the hood of the car. She tried to watch Jackpot Jeopardy! but her eyes were teary and the screen was blurred. She only wished Dan would turn toward her and look right now. She was wearing a tube top and her flat stomach and perfect breasts were practically speaking for themselves. She only wanted Dan to want her again as he had in her bedroom. She imagined herself back in her room, amid her stuffed animals, sitting across Dan, holding a plush manatee in his mouth to muffle his coarse exhalations. She was trying to will him to turn toward her. She was his little fuck bunny. He said so. Look at your little fuck bunny, she thought, squeezing her eyes closed to hold back the tears.

  Dan turned toward her.

  She smiled.

  “I’ll talk to Eric tomorrow about a small part for you,” he said.

  “Oh, Danny!” she said, throwing her arms around him.

  34.

  “So, what do you know about this photographer, this Ricky Lime?”

  Eric and Mimsy lay in afterglow, the satiny sheets pulled halfway over their naked bodies, the television set to low burble. Eric had one momentary twinge of guilt—an ancient reflex—and thought, briefly, about Sandy and where she might be. Then he looked again at Mimsy Borogoves and thought her beautiful in a way he seldom encountered, beautiful right through, deep like soul-deep. Is this love? he wondered.

  Mimsy was balancing a glass of whiskey on her flat stomach.

  “I don’t know him very well,” she said. “Why?”

  “He keeps coming to me with these, um, anomalies in his photos, these blurry images tha
t I think he thinks are ghosts.”

  “Ghosts? Isn’t there practically a whole school of ghost photography, most of which has to do more with bad-quality film than anything occult?”

  “Well put. Yes. But, well, I’ve seen these photos . . . and they do seem eerie.”

  “In what way?”

  “Don’t laugh. There is a whole series of Elvis photos.”

  Mimsy smiled. Her mouth was busy swallowing a titter. It may have been a titter, or perhaps a guffaw.

  “I know, I know. It’s just that the sap is so insistent. I think I ought to fire him.”

  “Well, Eric, I wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. How are his stills for the film?”

  And there it was again, stalking him like a ghoul, the evidence of his own detachment, his own lack of passion for the project. Surely it showed in everything he did and didn’t do. For instance, lying in this plush bed with the beguiling Mimsy Borogoves rather than doing—well, a dozen or more necessary things to make sure this film came together.

  The question before him was: how are Ricky Lime’s stills for the film? Grand? Inspiring? Germane?

  Eric had an opinion, surely. He’d seen the photos. He knew the city. What was the sticking point? Oh, yes, he had no real vision for this movie, no real consistent vision.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” he said.

  “Then—forget the other. Let it slide. Use his images of the city for the movie and grin and bear it when he goes all new age on you.”

  Mimsy Borogoves was a rock, a foundation upon which you could build a church.

  “Yes, yes, that’s best,” Eric said.

  “When do you anticipate location filming beginning?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Eric waved a hand in the air like a dithering kite. “When—when? I suppose, well, the sets are ready. I guess we should, should—” His voice died away. His brow wrinkled.

  “What?” Mimsy said. A small furrow of concern passed over her face.

  “I don’t remember what the locations are. I don’t remember what to do next. I have no clear idea . . .” His voice died again, one of the birds sent from Ararat that didn’t return.

  “Eric,” Mimsy said, taking his hand. “Talk to me. Are you having some kind of performance anxiety about this movie? What’s going on?”

  “Mimsy. Mimsy Borogoves,” he said, dreamily. “I—I have no idea what this movie is about. I have no connection to it. I don’t remember the story, if there is one. I don’t know who is in it or what it’s gonna look like, or what my role is, if I have one. What would happen if I just showed up and turned it over to the techies, to Sandy, to—to you—for instance? What would happen? I tell you what. It would still be made. Movies, once begun, are a snowball gathering momentum. All kinds of things will be picked up, gathered on the decline, and the increasing speed of the snowball will either be a good thing or a bad thing, but it won’t matter. At the bottom will be this big, motherfucking snowball, perhaps ugly with mud and debris and the accrual of everyone who threw things at it as it rolled downward, ever downward. Perhaps, and this is the magic part, just perhaps it will look like a glorious, clean, glistening snowball, all white and sparkly and seemingly smoothed by experts. But at the bottom, beyond all the folks who pitched in, all who stood by the slope and cheered or didn’t, at the bottom there will be a snowball. And, so, I don’t matter, see? It’s just as well that I am confused, lost, uninspired, fearful. None of it matters.”

  “So, what’s your worry?” Mimsy asked, stroking his hand as if it were a kid glove.

  “Ah, so what’s my worry? My worry is this: Art. Ok? See how foolish? Art. It’s what I set out to do, it was my whole life. I wanted to make art. Now, I find myself back home, making a movie I am almost forced to make if I am to reclaim my career, and I have my mind still on Art. As if I could still wrestle it from the darkness and bring it, flickering into lit-up life.”

  “Art kills,” Mimsy said.

  Eric turned to her now. Art kills? he thought. Jesus, that’s a frightening thought. Is it true? Eric found himself in the position of being willing to believe anything Mimsy Borogoves told him.

  “Does it, Mimsy?” he asked. His voice was weak, drained of its humanity.

  “It does, Eric, dear, if you let it. Art, like life, happens when you’re doing something else. When the magician makes you look elsewhere.”

  “It seems simple when you say it.”

  “No, it’s not simple, Eric. It’s hopelessly complex.”

  “What do I do?” Eric asked her. Briefly, for a flaming instant, he believed she could tell him.

  35.

  Lorax had gone off. She said she had met some people and she was going off with them. Camel considered this. Where had Lorax met some people? She never seemed to leave the house. It didn’t matter.

  Camel had packed his pipe with some rich homegrown.

  He sat, meditatively puffing on it, while a wobbly 33 was spinning out a song called “Magdalene, My Regal Zonophone.” Camel believed he understood the song. Herbal insight. The record wobbled so much the singer sounded as if he was gargling. Camel thought this was the way the song was supposed to sound because, for him, it had sounded that way for a long time.

  On Camel’s lap lay the screenplay to Memphis Movie. He had read it 14 times.

  And to its jerrybuilt structure he had added two aperçus and one bit of poesy that he filched from an old Lawrence Ferlinghetti paperback.

  Was this how I used to write? he asked himself. Yes, I always kept open books next to my legal pad, words of thaumaturges and friends and poet-priests. It’s called inspiration. It’s called seeking inspiration. Yes, yes, this was just.

  Now, he had become intrigued with the liner notes to a Dylan album. He was immersed in the nonsense lines. Something there turned a key, a rusty key.

  Camel inserted a line of dialogue into a conversation on page 13 of the script.

  Page 13.

  Camel stopped and thought about that.

  The number 13 held no special significance to him. He was not triskaidekaphobic. And yet—yet—why poke the sleeping demons, even if they were not your sleeping demons.

  He erased the line he wrote.

  Somehow, at some point, the record had stopped emitting music. He looked long and hard at the turntable. The record was still spinning, the needle lost in some dead groove. The sound was not unlike what a raven makes asking to be let in, scraping its beak upon your bust of Pallas. Scritch, scritch, scritch.

  He knew a woman named Pallas once. She was lovely in her bones, a deep-souled Southern woman with legs like a spectral dobbin. Pallas Something. Another bird, Camel thought. Pallas Gnatcatcher? No, it was alliterative. Pallas Pipit? Pallas Plover?

  Too puzzling.

  Screenplay. He must concentrate on the screenplay. He tossed the Dylan album cover aside. Once there had been a record inside that sleeve, a record wherein lyrics were enunciated and proclaimed with the cauterizing voice of an ancient scop.

  An album. A record.

  Camel considered the words, their many meanings. What was missing?

  The music.

  He rose, reluctantly, and pulled a record from the derelict crates that housed them. He reached in at random, trusting providence to deliver to him the music that he needed at that particular time.

  He didn’t even look at the disc. It spun. That was important. He placed the needle carefully at the beginning of the record. This was crucial. Begin at the beginning. Not that Camel believed by doing so one could find the straight path through.

  No. Nothing was that simple.

  The music began. Gypsy muscle music. Music from the fen.

  A droning voice. A song called “I Just Sit There.”

  Yes.

  Whose voice? Not Dylan, Dylan-lite. David Blue? John Kay? Janis? Perry Como? Camel knew this voice. Was it Sonny Bono? Sonny, dead now, Camel mused, telling him, from the beyond, to just sit there.

  Camel returned to his chai
r and just sat there. He trusted the message as it had come to him through honest channels.

  And as he sat he cleared his mind. There was no more clutter there now. No more random seekings after names that alliterated or did not. No more woolgathering. No more lines of poetry.

  No more lines of poetry.

  No more writing.

  No more writing.

  Camel put his face in his hands and wept. He wept.

  Later, he used the telephone to call a friend.

  “I have to get out,” he said. “I have been locked in this detention center by men in suits, alcaides with money, Baal worshipers with their deceitful gods and corrupt dreams, dreams that twisted and warped and bled. I have to get out.”

  His friend said that she would come right away.

  Camel sat back in his chair. It would be better now. There were people alerted and they were coming. They would take Camel out of the house and show him the variegated world and how he could fit back in. He would be shown that even the most outside outsider has a place in the human parade. Camel began to smile.

  And then to laugh.

  When his friend got there Camel was sitting in his chair laughing like a moonstruck amadan.

  36.

  Eric left Mimsy’s bed grudgingly.

  And, upon finding himself outside her apartment building, he couldn’t remember how he had gotten there. Cab? Or his driver? No, not that.

  Oh, Mimsy had driven him. Should he go back and remind her? No, actually he felt like walking a bit. It just might clear his head. And it just might reconnect him to this city. He figured he could hail a cab when he got tired.

  Downtown Memphis at night was quite a sight. Not what he remembered. It seemed to hum with life and glow with neon light. He walked east on Madison, heading away from the river and the city lights.

  After a bit of walking he found himself inhaling the smell of baking bread. It hit him like a madeleine. The Wonder Bread factory. Does one call it a factory? He remembered it from his elementary school field trip there, where they gave you free samples at the end of the tour. He remembered how disappointing the little hunk of white bread was after imbibing that smell. It was like a stolen sip of vanilla. But, surely they weren’t baking bread now, at nearly one a.m. Was this sense memory? Or the ghost of his youth returning with olfactory hallucination? He laughed to himself and thought of that crazy Ricky Lime.