by Corey Mesler
“I am,” Camel said, gravely.
“Do you want to go back to your poem?”
“It would probably be easier than, you know.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to do the easy thing, Camel?”
“Not tonight,” Camel said. And he pushed his legal pad to the floor. It settled at their feet like a dove. Later, the poem was finished and when Camel saw it he couldn’t for the life of him remember penning those closing lines.
57.
The brunette actress from the Lexus commercial was named Sue (Lying Sue) Pine. She arrived in Memphis on an early morning flight, direct from Orlando, Florida. She had just come from shooting a commercial at Disneyworld. Her agent called her and said a movie being shot in Memphis had requested her and she took the first plane out. Barely 48 hours had passed since Dan Yumont had seen her on TV.
Hassle Cooley picked her up at the airport.
“Welcome to Memphis,” Hassle said, once she was settled into the backseat.
“Thank you,” Sue Pine said. “Am I supposed to go straight to the set?”
“That’s what I’m told,” Hassle said. He had an uncanny ability to drive his car and watch the backseat simultaneously.
“I don’t know this director. What’s his name again?” Sue Pine said. She had a cool, studied nonchalance to her speech, the product of good schools mixed with small dollops of dissipation.
“Eric Warberg. He’s the real deal.”
“Ah. Well, I hope my part is big enough to warrant this disruption of my life,” Sue Pine said. Inside she was agog that she was about to appear in a real movie. The closest she had come previously was a walk-on in a Tim Burton movie. The day of the shoot Tim Burton was home sick with a case of food poisoning and, somehow, in the interim the scene was axed. She never even got to meet Burton, whom she idolized.
“There are no small parts,” Hassle said with a grin.
“Right,” Sue Pine said. She was already tired of her driver.
She was hustled onto the set as if without her the movie could not go on. The outside of the Pyramid goggled her. The inside was like a fairy tale. There were sets constructed with such detail that she thought people actually lived in them.
“Hi,” a blonde woman with large hips said, rushing toward her and extending a hand. “You must be Sue Pine. I’m Mr. Warberg’s assistant.” Apparently she had no name, Sue thought.
“Yes,” Sue Pine said.
“Welcome to Memphis. Right now, Mr. Warberg is shooting. So, if you would, I’d like you to come with me.”
“Certainly,” Sue said. There were people everywhere, people with many things to do. It was like an insect colony inside the Pyramid. Sue Pine thought that each and every person was more important than her. She also thought that given just one chance on the big screen she could be on her way to stardom. She had been schooled to believe this her entire life. Ambition bubbled in Sue like heady foam.
Sue was led to a dressing room. On the door was the name of an actor who, to Sue, was only a dream personage. Surely, someone as grand, as magisterial as Dan Yumont didn’t actually exist in the flesh. Surely, he was created by the movies. This is a Dan Yumont film, she thought.
Sue hesitated outside the door.
“Go ahead,” the blonde assistant said. “He’s waiting for you.”
Sue opened the door and looked back once, like Lot’s wife. She entered a room that was like a set in 2001. It was so white she thought she had gone blind. And there was no one inside. Only white furnishings, white walls, and a white rug so thick Sue wanted to sleep on it.
Sue turned back just as an inner door opened and she heard a voice. Or more precisely The Voice.
“Hello,” Dan Yumont said. It was the voice from countless films that Sue esteemed. She stepped backward, a bit unsteady on her pins, and her eyes took in Dan Yumont, just coming out of the john, zipping up his fly.
“Sorry,” he said. “Hello. I’m Dan Yumont.”
“Sue Pine,” she said.
Dan smiled. Then—he squinted. Sue Pine felt her heart drop a good half inch inside her chest.
“Is that your real name?” he asked.
“No,” Sue Pine said. “Stage name. It means morally lethargic.”
“Does it?” Dan Yumont said. He was gesturing toward a couch. The couch was as white as a blank screen.
“Does that door lock?” Sue Pine said. She had no idea where that line came from. Her part was being written for her as she lived it.
58.
Dusk. A light drizzle through a Halloween light.
Camel and Lorax were at the Easy Way shopping for dinner. Easy Way was like an old-fashioned vegetable stand housed in a building the size of a gas station.
“Tell me again what you’re making for dinner, Camel Dear,” Lorax said. She was sleepy. She was sleepy a lot. Sleep was one thing that Lorax did really well. She was Past Master at Sleeping. She held a PhD in sleeping. She slept the way Jacques Cousteau sailed. She slept the way Marco Polo traveled. She slept the way Jimmy cracked corn. And she slept the way Meryl Streep acted: she put her heart and soul into it.
“Camel’s Disambiguation Digestive Salmagundi,” Camel said with a wry grin.
“Camel, can you do just about anything?”
“No, Sweet. Camel’s ability to do things is very limited. I write an ok poem. I can sing like Dan Hicks if I’ve been drinking. And I can make a stew that opens your bowels and your pneuma at the same time.”
“Good, good Camel,” Lorax said. She picked up a pointed gourd. “What’s this lovely thing, Camel?”
“Um, a parwal, I think. Also called green potato. A lovely vegetable indeed. But not intended to be part of Camel’s stew.”
“Do we need these big garlics?”
“Elephant garlic. Hmp. I was in Oregon once. I think it was Oregon. At an elephant garlic festival. I was with Kesey and he seemed to know everyone that day. That day he was cock of the walk, the sexy cynosure, and it was a pleasure just to walk around with him and witness how people were drawn to him as if he were the lodestone. Ken was a sweet man, a good man with a heart like a boar’s. I use the past tense. Is Ken gone? I can’t remember. That afternoon at the Elephant Garlic Festival, with Ken tripping and all smiles and pats on the back, was Magic Time, and it wasn’t too long before we had female companionship, twins from Idaho, of all things, delicate, mink women. And they led us to their trailer and there they had some of the finest hash I have ever had the good fortune to smoke. And along with this hash they had a freezer full of garlic ice cream. Garlic ice cream. I couldn’t make this up. They were there for the festival, see, and for a treat they had made garlic ice cream. High on hash, Kesey and I thought that ice cream was just about the closest thing to ambrosia we humans would ever be vouchsafed. That afternoon, in the trailer of the twins from Idaho, we saw a little of the godhead, just a glimpse, via the unlikely amalgamation of hash and garlic ice cream. What was the question?”
Lorax was standing in the narrow aisle of the Easy Way and there were tears in her eyes, little moist rims like dew on a flower.
“Camel, did you love one of those twins more than you love me?”
Camel considered the question seriously.
“No, Lorax. Now that I think about it, I did not. And the more I think about it the more I think, well, Lorax, I love you just about more than anyone ever in my life.”
Camel paused and watched Lorax’s round cheeks dry as if by abracadabra.
“Except for Allen,” Lorax said.
“Yes, except for Allen,” Camel allowed.
“I love you, Camel,” Lorax said.
Camel put his big arms around the diminutive Lorax. They stood there like that for many minutes, as shoppers moved around them as if they were a natural part of the shopping experience at Easy Way.
“Camel,” Lorax said, finally, pulling away a bit.
“Yes, dear.”
“Is this a chestn
ut?” Lorax opened her small, sweaty palm and something rested there like an egg in a nest.
“Hm,” Camel said. “I think that is a pignut. Yes, a pignut.”
“Can we put it in the stew?”
“Yes, if you’d like.”
“We should get a stew-bone for Fido.”
“Yes, thoughtful you.”
Lorax hummed a little tune and smiled. She looked around, seemingly aware of their surroundings for the first time.
“Oh, and Camel?”
“Yes, Sweet.”
“Isn’t that a movie star?”
Camel’s attention was drawn to a woman shopping in the leafy vegetables. The woman was Hope Davis.
“I think so,” Camel said. “I think she is a movie star.”
“Ok,” Lorax said. “Ok, Camel. Let’s go home and make a stew and talk about movies and vegetables and poems and stuff. Ok?”
“Yes, Sweet.”
“Oh, and Camel?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s not talk about the twins anymore.”
59.
“So, suddenly there is this new actress on the set, some brunette goddess from Provo, Utah. Provo, Utah, for God’s sake. Someone with no film experience whatsoever, keep in mind, who suddenly has a part in my film. How does this happen? This happens because Dan Yumont has an appetite like the jaws of a jail. Exactly like a jail, now that I think about it. So, now there is confusion on the set. Kimberly thinks this new woman—and get this, her name is Sue Pine, Sue Pine—Kimberly thinks she is going to get her part. Which, truthfully, if it were up to me she would, she would take Kimberly’s part except that we already have so much of her in the can. The sex scene, well, Jesus, I don’t wanna film that again.”
Eric was sputtering like an overfilled kettle on the boil. Mimsy placed a cool palm against his temple.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the question. That’s what Joe LeRose asked today. What is Eric going to do now that his star has brought in talent that has no place? Suddenly it’s Eric’s problem.”
“Well, it is, Baby. It is your problem. Who is Joe LeRose?”
Eric looked at Mimsy. Her face shown like rose petals.
“Yes,” he said, after a minute. “Yes. It’s my problem. I think Joe is an executive producer. Shit, I don’t know. I think that’s what he is. Maybe Sandy can write this bimbo a small part. Jesus. As if this film weren’t confusing enough. Eden already thinks we have no plan, and he’s constantly cooking up ones of his own. Which, well, it’s the truth, but we don’t tell Eden that. Eden’s worrying me with who the releaser is gonna be. Christ, it’s not my bailiwick. Call whatshisname—the tub thumper. I am the director. The movie. I am making the movie. But, just as it is starting to cohere, starting to look like there’s a story behind all the smoke and mirrors, Dan throws me this curve.”
“Did you ask Dan what he expected you to do?”
Eric hesitated.
“I did,” he said. “I asked him how she came to be here and what I was supposed to do about it.”
“And he said?”
“He said, ‘Eric, she fucks like an alley cat.’ No kidding. That was his answer.”
“Good God.”
“Right. Good God. What is Eric to do with his star’s fuck buddy?”
It was around midnight. On the TV was one of those CNN screens with about 30 different messages showing at once. The sound was muted. Eric looked at it and he thought in the confused jumble of symbols he saw something, a mandala, a significance. He was fairly hypnotized by the screen. Mimsy lay beside him reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.
Eric and Mimsy were in a Peabody Hotel room. They had rented one for their trysts because Mimsy said her apartment was being redecorated. They were registered under the name Mimsy Borogoves to save Eric the anguish of speaking to wannabes. Room service had brought steak dinners about 15 minutes ago. The steaks sat on a table next to the bed. They were a task to be accomplished sometime soon, before the fat coagulated, before the potatoes cooled.
“Are you hungry yet?” Mimsy said, absently, turning a page.
Eric was drawn back from the edge of enlightenment. The room took shape and color around him.
“I guess I am,” he said.
“I guess I am, too,” Mimsy said.
“Let’s eat in the bed,” Eric said.
“Let’s,” Mimsy said. “Let housekeeping worry about the grease.”
“Right.”
“First let’s find something worth watching,” Mimsy said, pulling her plate onto her lap.
They agreed on The Laughing Policeman, a Walter Matthau police picture.
“Never heard of it,” Mimsy said.
“It’s pretty good. Matthau. And Anthony Zerbe. What ever became of Anthony Zerbe? Well, I imagine he’s dead now. It’s based on a Dutch thriller, I think. Bruce Dern, too. You know, I asked for Bruce Dern on this picture.”
“Is that Cathy Lee Crosby?”
“Um, yes, yes, it is.”
“Hm.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Eric seemed to be watching the movie keenly.
“You know if they can make Cathy Lee Crosby look good I can make Sue Pine look like a Barrymore.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Really. I’ll throw her in there. I’ll ask Sandy to give her a nice, nutty, tough little speech and we’ll just throw her in. No, wait, wait—”
There was urgency suddenly in his voice.
“I’ll get Camel to write her one of his surrealistic little monologues!”
Mimsy’s smile threatened to erupt into laughter.
“It’s perfect! It might be just what the damn picture needs. I mean it’s left-field enough already—but to introduce a new star—see, see—in the credits And introducing Sue Pine. See? We go all-out. Rather than hide her, we give her a star-making turn.”
Now Mimsy did laugh.
“No good?” Eric asked, but he was smiling, already way gone into his fancy.
“It’s brilliant,” Mimsy said.
“Yes,” Eric said. “It is. It’s brilliant.”
60.
Dan Yumont took Sue Pine to dinner that night down by the river. The restaurant was cool and dark and there were few rubberneckers or fans. Still, Dan and Sue were given a semi-private room, off the main floor. There they sat at a table with a white tablecloth and Dan squinted into the middle distance and Sue Pine kept pulling on his fingers as if milking them, her eyes nearly vacant. She felt as if she had been swept into a tidal wave from which she would be late coming down.
Dan’s other women, while this was occurring, were chewing on their separate disappointments. But only one of them was a cauldron of boiling rage, a toxic impulse arising in her like bile. Only one, this time.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” Sue Pine said, as if she had just landed in the Emerald City.
“Movie magic,” Dan said.
“You have powers.”
“Yes. Because I have money. Because I am famous,” Dan stated baldly.
“And a reputation,” Sue Pine said.
“Yes, that.”
“Why the bad rep? From what I’ve seen you’re a—a stand-up Jack.”
“A reputation is built slowly, brickbat by brickbat.”
“Yours is womanizer-bred.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem dangerous.”
Dan only squinted.
“It’s funny, I was just reading about you in the gossip columns while I was in Orlando. Something about being mistaken for a terrorist on your arrival in Memphis.”
“I lit a match on the airplane.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To hide the smell of my fart.”
“Hm. How do you like Memphis?” Sue Pine asked. “I’ve never been here.”
“How would I know?” Dan said.
After they ate Dan and Sue walked a bit. This
part of downtown, from which you could still see FedEx Forum, was as yet not entirely developed. There were still dark pockets of empty buildings and broken alleys. Through one of these alleys Sue espied the river.
“Oh, Dan, let’s go through here. Look at that river. It—it—”
“Just flows on,” Dan suggested.
“Yes, exactly,” Sue Pine said.
Halfway through the darkened passage Sue Pine pushed Dan against the damp, dank wall and pushed herself against him, grinding her pubic bone on the front of Dan’s jeans. She kissed him hungrily.
She spoke into his mouth, “It’s been hours,” she said.
Dan’s eyes were open. On the wall just opposite them was graffiti. The yellow paint read GODISALIVEMAGICISAFOOT. Dan smiled.
“She’s got a great ass,” came a voice from down the shadowy corridor.
Dan turned his head slowly. Sue Pine pressed herself harder against him.
There were three of them. A black kid, a Hispanic kid and a guy who looked Asian, possibly Vietnamese. Behind them, in the light at the end of the alley, a young woman stood, shifting herself uncertainly from one foot to the other, chewing a fingernail. She appeared to be as white as Sue Pine. Their aggregate age couldn’t have been 65.
Goddamn, Dan thought. I’m about to be mugged by the Rainbow Coalition.
“I said, she’s got a great ass,” the black kid said.
“I heard you,” Dan said.
The teens were stopped short. They looked at each other apprehensively. It was the voice. There was something familiar about it, something dangerous, something challenging.
“You might wanna share a woman as fine as that,” the kid suggested.
“I might,” Dan said.
Again the nervous eyes.
Sue Pine now turned her eyes toward the gang. She was scared shitless but they were kids. This did not seem comforting. Their mouths were vicious.
“Move away from her, Big Man,” the leader now commanded.
“She not enough for you?” Dan asked, motioning with his chin toward the doll at the end of the alley.
The gang didn’t like this questioning of them. They were dead sure they wanted to be in charge.
“She’s too much for you, white boy,” the Hispanic kid offered. The thread of the conversation was hanging loose.