A Film by Spencer Ludwig

by David Flusfeder

  ‘Just suppose. What if.’

  ‘OK. Play dead. Curl up in the foetal position with your hands protecting your head like so. But if it’s a black bear then make as much noise as you can and they’ll probably go away. They eat carrion so if you play dead they’ll probably try to eat you. But the best thing is just not to bother them. Most bear attacks are mothers defending their young.’

  ‘Black bear make a lot of noise, grizzly play dead.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What are you two talking about?’

  Suzie has managed to elude her interlocutor, who is picking at his shrimp cocktail and rubbing his thigh with his hand.

  ‘Ron is instructing me in the art of survival skills.’

  ‘Spencer is concerned he might get attacked by bear.’

  ‘Me too! Ever since I was a kid.’

  ‘Ron says, if it’s a grizzly you should make a lot of noise and that’ll probably scare it away. A black bear, then play dead.’

  Spencer sees Ron about to correct him and then stop himself. Perhaps Ron wants him, everybody, dead, ripped apart by a grizzly bear, or eaten by a black bear for carrion.

  ‘That’s good to know.’

  ‘Are you scared of any other animals?’ Spencer asks.

  ‘Most of them,’ Suzie says. ‘Dogs of course, especially the little yappy ones because they seem to have a kind of Napoleon complex. I don’t like cats but that’s not because they scare me. Just that I find them a little…’

  ‘Creepy?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  ‘What about cows?’

  ‘I don’t really have much feeling either way about cows.’

  ‘I detest them,’ Spencer says. ‘Not because I’m scared they’re going to kill me. Although, if you look at the statistics, the numbers of cow-related deaths are going up exponentially. It’s like Ron’s bears, they think they’re protecting their young so they try to manoeuvre you to the edge of the field, the fence or the hedgerow or something, and then you know what they do? They tip over on to their sides to crush you. Isn’t that horrible?’

  ‘Horrible,’ says Suzie.

  Ron is staring at the two of them in disgust. He has a stringy yellow moustache and loyal blue eyes. He probably does yoga to a very high standard and bakes his own bread and makes extremely long explanations to children.

  ‘Can you imagine it? Can you think of a more horrible way to die? Lying in a field being slowly crushed to death under a cow. But as I say, that’s not what really gets me about them. It’s their eyes. Have you ever looked into a cow’s eyes?’

  ‘I can’t say that I have.’

  ‘Ron. Have you ever looked into a cow’s eyes?’

  Ron makes a non-committal shrug.

  ‘You know what you see there? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s what offends me. There’s an utter absence of intelligence in their eyes. I find it loathsome.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Suzie says.

  ‘It’s bullshit,’ Ron says.

  ‘I like donkeys though. And tortoises,’ Spencer says.

  ‘Really?’ Suzie says, without enthusiasm or interest.

  ‘Ron bakes his own bread,’ Spencer says.

  ‘So do I!’ Suzie says. ‘Isn’t it the best thing?’

  Spencer had liked Suzie before. He likes her even better for baking her own bread. He likes Ron too. He admires his outdoor skills, his calmness. Ron could probably build a shack in the woods and survive for years on a diet of berries and his own urine. But he has lost his two table neighbours to each other. They lean forward and then back to find a route past Spencer to talk about gauges of flour and bread recipes, sourdough and pumpernickel.

  This is not quite what Spencer had been expecting from the gala dinner. It looks like more fun at the international table, where the real Albanian is giving some kind of lecture, with the help of an interpreter, who, Spencer realises when he looks at her more closely, is the multi-talented Jenny De Soto, dressed for the occasion in a black evening dress that spangles and shimmers in the lights. The real Albanian is a small, clerical-looking man with close-cropped grey hair and a fearsomely intelligent, perhaps slightly feral face. It is well known that he has worked with Tarkovsky and Chris Marker.

  Spencer would like to hear the real Albanian’s wisdom. He would like to be playing poker. He would like to be feeling even drunker than he already is. He picks up the nearest bottle and splashes more wine into his own glass and into the glasses of the neighbours at his table.

  ‘No thank you,’ Ron says.

  Cheryl and Mike Baumbach, who look more like sister and brother than wife and husband, take to the podium. A tapping of microphones, a shriek of feedback, sarcastic cheers from the tables.

  ‘Welcome,’ says Cheryl Baumbach. ‘We’re so thrilled that you’re here, the creative communities of New Jersey.’

  ‘This is great, it’s so great, this is our dream, Cheryl and I,’ Mike says. ‘Uh, please. Jerry?’

  The Baumbachs step away from the podium towards opposite sides and look behind. The ballroom lights dim, an image appears on the screen, the Short Beach Film Festival logo, accompanied by a painfully thunderous slash of organ music that elicits shouts and desperate pleadings from the creative community of New Jersey.

  ‘Jerry!’ Cheryl Baumbach yells.

  The music cuts out and then timidly reappears, growing slowly, to settle at a tolerable volume. And we see shots of the Atlantic City Boardwalk and the sea, black and white, slightly out of focus, a photograph, colour now, of a group of schoolchildren looking inexplicably excited in a classroom, two men, one black, the other Asian, playing chess in a park. And now we see clips of films, which Spencer supposes to be the fruits of the creative community of New Jersey, a montage of two-shots of couples, usually young, usually looking bored, in a bedroom, a bar, sitting in a field, which is followed by a sequence of long-shots of men walking, in city streets, along a beach, a bridge, men in suits carrying briefcases or laptop bags, men in suits carrying nothing at all except for a vague hunted look, men in chinos and T-shirts, men in surfer shorts and T-shirts.

  ‘What’s the point of this?’ Spencer asks, but neither Suzie nor Ron responds. Suzie is looking sort of dazed. Ron is staring impatiently at the screen, waiting, we suppose, for the montage of wildlife shots, the birds taking flight over the river, the mother bears suckling their young.

  ‘Could we have a word?’

  Crouching beside Spencer’s chair, knees creaking in unison, are Mike and Cheryl Baumbach.

  ‘It’s a great pleasure to be here,’ Spencer says.

  ‘And we’re ecstatic to have you,’ Cheryl says, with equal lack of feeling.

  ‘We have a little problem,’ Mike says.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like some wine?’ Spencer says.

  ‘It’s quite a big problem,’ Cheryl says.

  ‘Of a fiduciary nature,’ Mike says.

  ‘Mike’s put everything into this.’

  ‘It does you credit,’ Spencer says.

  ‘It’s all gone,’ Mike says.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Everything. Pfft. Pfft.’

  Mike Baumbach makes little popped-balloon whizzing noises and waves a hand to signify the loss of it all.

  ‘I don’t quite get it,’ Spencer admits.

  ‘There’s a fellow called Dwight. Works at the front desk at the hotel.’

  ‘Worked,’ corrects Cheryl.

  ‘Worked, works, worked. Used to work at the front desk.’

  ‘Of course, yes. I know Dwight. He’s been very helpful.’

  ‘That’s kind of the point.’

  ‘A little too helpful.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

  ‘He’s bust the bank,’ says Mike.

  ‘He had access to the festival account,’ says Cheryl.

  ‘Pffft. Pffft. Pffffft,’ says Mike.

  ‘Took it on himself to…’

  ‘Expedite an
d facilitate?’

  ‘That’s what he called it.’

  ‘The weird thing is that he hasn’t taken a thing for himself as far as we can tell,’ says Cheryl.

  ‘Pffft,’ says Mike.

  ‘But you, for example, and your father.’

  ‘That wheelchair, for example.’

  ‘The oxygen equipment.’

  ‘And assorted sundries. We figure about twenty-eight thousand dollars.’

  ‘Blimey. That’s a lot.’

  ‘Isn’t it.’

  ‘So whenever you get a chance to reimburse us.’

  ‘First available opportunity.’

  ‘That would be great.’

  Spencer is having trouble processing this. But a further, more imperative thought pushes everything else away.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Spencer says.

  About to refill his glass, reaching for the wine bottle across the dark debris of the table, the lights from the promotional film show shining rather prettily through the glasses and bottles and water jug, the realisation hits him that his father has been on the same oxygen cylinder for about four hours. It will be dangerously low now, perhaps even empty.

  Spencer gets up so abruptly that his chair topples over on to its back. He does not investigate the ensuing sounds, the muffled thud, crash of glass, a soft dripping of liquid, an outraged Cheryl Baumbach squeak. His way to his father’s table is fast but unsteady. His hands come into contact with unexpected surfaces, a vase of flowers, a lighted candle, a bearded gentleman’s face, the wet contents of a soup bowl, a woman’s left breast.

  His father is asleep, mouth open, breath shallow, one end of the tube hanging away from his left nostril, the other still fixed in place.

  ‘Come on, Dad,’ Spencer says.

  He eases his father’s legs over so he is perched on his wheelchair in an approximate driving position. Jimmy Ludwig mutters angrily in his sleep, jerks his arms away to make a pillow against the seat-rest and shifts further to curl towards a foetal position.

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  Spencer forces his father to sit straight in his chair, trying to go gentle with the fragile bones, not to grip too hard on the bruisable skin, and he remembers with some annoyance that his most recent failed New Year’s resolution had been never to apologise and only occasionally to explain. Spencer switches on the ignition, and his father flops away again into a position more comfortable for sleep.

  ‘Bollocks,’ says Spencer.

  ‘Sssh!’ hisses someone near by.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Spencer. ‘Fuck. Bollocks.’

  ‘SSSH!’

  On the screen, delighting Ron no doubt, probably even authored by Ron, is a close-up of a pair of white horses in a field. Spencer does not have the time to admire or dread their sleekness or their eyes. He clambers on to the back of the wheelchair, straddling the engine, as if his father were a motorcycle rider and he the pillion passenger. His father drifts away and then back again, cracking Spencer on the chin with the crown of his head. Spencer leans forward, forcing his father to sit straight, and reaches past him for the handlebars. He presses the machine into gear.

  Off they go, tentative at first, nudging against feet, steering into and away from the legs of chairs. He has the choice to proceed like this, inching around the obstacles in the ballroom, human and otherwise, or just to shut his eyes and aim for the most direct path to the door. His father’s eyes are, as far as he can tell, still shut, his chin resting on his surgical collar. Spencer twists the handlebar that controls acceleration and off they go, skittering, colliding, raising yelps and sudden accusations, but they keep going, gathering speed, snagging a loose corner of a tablecloth here, ripping a trouser leg there, rolling over electricity cables, fallen wineglasses, pools of grease and meat, plump feet overstuffed into dainty evening slippers.

  ‘Stop that wheelchair!’ somebody yells.

  The double doors open before them, perhaps out of inanimate terror, and Spencer and his father are blazing a path along the red carpet of a hotel corridor.

  A boy, his mouth smeared with chocolate sauce, raises an ice-cream cone towards them in salutation. In the elevator, a prim-looking man riding his own, less deluxe electric wheelchair nods at Spencer and remarks, It’s the only way to travel, to which Spencer manages to mumble some kind of response.

  Spencer’s father is alarmingly light. Spencer carries him from his wheelchair and lays him down on the bed. He switches on the oxygen machine and attaches the tube to his father’s nose. There is an immediate beneficial effect. His father’s chest rises more fully with each breath. His eyes drift open again, slowly focus on Spencer.

  ‘Who?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ Spencer says, terribly and wretchedly sober. ‘Don’t worry. You’re fine.’

  The telephone rings. Spencer does not answer it. There is blood again on his father’s head. Spencer wipes it away with toilet paper, and more seeps out again. He pulls over the armchair and watches his father, who tugs irritably at the tube in his nose and then lets his hands fall by his sides.

  When Spencer lifts a hand to his own face he finds another source for the blood that was on his father’s head. It smears on to his fingertips from the cut on his chin.

  Spencer watches over his father. The hours go by. His father sleeps unlaboured and peaceful. Spencer puts on his street clothes.

  Chapter Nine

  He has no destination in mind. Spencer walks through the casino at night, the slot machine players, the last indoor smokers in America, the graveyard shift working the poker room, and the sign for tomorrow’s tournament with its $250,000 guaranteed prize pool—and how Spencer would love to play in that, first or second prize would liberate him from all dependencies and most obligations. He dodges a pair of black-T-shirted festival reps walking blearily past the High Roller suite carrying broken wineglasses and tired clipboards. On a chair between palm trees, Drussilla and Tanya are curled together, sleeping.

  When Spencer sees the Baumbachs, talking fast into cellphones, he takes an unaccustomed exit, away from the sea, on to Pacific Avenue, the high-end stores that are no less empty at night than they are during the day, someone’s fitful dream of Vegas, but no one wants Prada in Atlantic City. He walks past the hospital, a convenience store, and up on to Atlantic Avenue. He is hit by a strange sensation that he interprets at first as indigestion, and then maybe as the shock of internal electricity that presages the arrival of a cataclysmic health issue—Dostoyevsky tells us that in the moment before an epileptic fit he is struck by an intensity and a sharpness that make life worth living. Spencer walks along Atlantic Avenue, where he is not alone, there are prostitutes and beggars and slow-rolling cars, and he realises that what he is experiencing is a furtive feeling of freedom, dimly remembered from when he was seventeen and travelling around the country, or that first day on set shooting his own first film, or the night he left his nearly-wife.

  He has no plan, no expectations; as Robert W knew, it is good just to walk, sidewalk, muscles, bones, movement, the world. He is tireless, invigorated, inseparable. He has no intention, just to keep on walking is the good thing, so when he stops outside Atlantic Gold, a twenty-four-hour pawnbroker and cheque-cashing bureau, there is no thought in his head other than the need to loosen his sneaker and scratch the inside of his right ankle.

  The window of Atlantic Gold is barred and grilled. Behind the metal Spencer sees bowling trophies, jewellery, watches. He does not intend to go inside. He goes inside.

  The shopkeeper is a dapper man who reminds him of Dwight, formerly of the hotel, except this man is white, about twenty years older, and unliveried.

  ‘Good evening, sir.’

  An audacious action independent of thought suddenly announces itself through Spencer. His father’s cheque is in his hand and he is passing it under the glass that declares itself with a bright gay yellow sticker to be bullet-proof.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like to cash this please.’

  Th
e man glances at the cheque. He does not consent to touch it.

  ‘That’s not going to be possible.’

  Refusal always strengthens desire, maybe even inspires it. Spencer empties his wallet of picture IDs and waves them at the glass.

  ‘Look. What more can you want? This is my passport and this is my driver’s licence, this is my membership of BAFTA and here, here,’ (he waves his misspelled accreditation from the film festival) ‘this is me again. I am who I say I am. And the cheque is good.’

  ‘Uh, sir. Two reasons, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘For one, this is a cheque-cashing bureau.’ ‘And this is a cheque!’

  ‘We cash social security and company cheques. Not personal cheques. That’s not what we do.’

  ‘Well isn’t it time you moved the rules around a little?’

  ‘We get along with our rules perfectly well. I don’t think it would be appropriate to change them now.’

  ‘But isn’t life a process of becoming? How can we ever know what we might be if we don’t allow for the possibility of change?’

  How he wishes Dwight were working here. Dwight would expedite and facilitate. Dwight would grasp the philosophical truth straight away.

  ‘That’s an interesting point, sir.’

  ‘Well consider it. I won’t rush you. I think you know I’m right.’

  ‘Be that as it may, we find ourselves at my second reason.’ Confident in his ontology, Spencer waits to demolish the clerk’s second line of philosophical or procedural fortifications. ‘Even if we were disposed to cash this cheque, I say even

  if—

  ‘I hear you saying it.’

  ‘Even if, we wouldn’t be able to. But that’s a pretty watch you’re wearing.’

  ‘Thank you. It was a gift, from my father. But look—’

  ‘Piaget?’

  ‘I think it’s Patek Philippe actually. But I don’t see why you can’t bend the rules. Here’s my passport, here’s a perfectly legitimate cheque. All I’m asking you to do is—’

  ‘Excuse me. If you read the name on the face here, you’ll see that it’s a Piaget. Nice little piece. Even if the band is somewhat scratched. Nice piece nonetheless.’

  ‘Thank you. But I’m here about the cheque.’