The two went inside but Alan couldn’t fall asleep.
He kept the light on, holding onto Bart as waves crashed like angry beasts, pounding down his world.
subtext
“I got my first ulcer when I was fourteen. It felt like a helicopter crashed inside me.”
Throat cleared. Fingers of both hands welded together. Separating; a tearing zipper.
“My father’s a director. Stage. Very famous. Great guy. Brilliant. Brain a little bigger than his heart. But … lots of talent. I’m a writer.”
A Cessna divebombs outside; Pearl Harbor noises. A gardener trims, five stories down.
“My mother?”
Face put on pause. Reverse. Stopping at a year.
“I don’t know. She was very kind. An actress. Her emotions … I don’t know … mix was too rich, maybe. She was on antidepressants. Used to paint when she’d be at home recovering at the beach house we had in Sag Harbor. That’s back East. I’m good with directions if you ever need a map or anything. Is it okay to make jokes?”
A meerschaum pumping smoke signals; comfort.
“Nothing really to say about my sister. Pretty normal stuff. We fought, we got along. Sometimes we still talk. I don’t know.”
Feeling in a womb.
“I was married. Maybe it was a mistake. The divorce, I mean. But I wanted a big career. I started getting into a lot of success thinking. My ex-wife, her name is Cynthia. I guess I didn’t say that.”
Confession lingering. An impression in fresh, wet thought.
“I think my ambition scared her. I got married when I was twenty-three. Divorced three years later.”
Discomfort.
“I was reading a lot of books about how to make things happen. Make dreams come true, manifest the extraordinary … that kind of thing. Bothered her. She thought I should stick with more concrete approaches. I told her concrete was for sinking dead bodies.”
Restless, percussive mannerisms.
“We never had children or anything. I wasn’t ready. I’m still not. I don’t understand them. To me, they’re one step up from clay. It’s weird. She married some fucking gauze-head named Dave who leads self-realization workshops. Guess she was getting revenge.”
Dark shrug.
“My writing is my contribution. My creation of life, I guess you could say. Is that bullshit? Can you test for bullshit? I’m strong on the essay part.”
Glancing at watch. Mind searching for a rope ladder. A way to escape sieged thoughts.
“I’ve been having nightmares. Violent, bloody images. I came to you because I—I’m under a lot of pressure these days. I’ve created a TV series and it’s taking up all my time working on the pilot. Did I already say I’m a writer/producer?”
Acid glance.
“I actually have my own slash. That’s how you know you’ve made it in television. You’re two people.”
Eyes forcing amusement; sad bellows.
“Anyway, I’m under a tremendous amount of pressure with this new pilot and moving into an expensive house and having these weird nightmares and … I don’t know what they mean. Maybe what I need to find out is it means nothing. I guess that would be interesting. If it means nothing, do I still have to pay you?”
Smiles. New question.
“The marriage breakup? I don’t know. Sex was routine after a while. You hand me this, I’ll hand you that. Start a fire, put out a fire.”
Mood weeds.
“She used to tell me I was incapable of expressing rage.”
Avoidance.
“I’ve had fantasies about my father’s new wife. Is that weird? It’s weird, right?”
Dimples clenching; retreating.
“I feel embarrassed. I mean, I think it’s a little … but she’s young and totally gorgeous. Every time I’m around them, I have to hide my reaction. I should be put in like Freud prison and have a giant salami for a cellmate. I even think my father knows sometimes. But it isn’t like she’s really my mother.”
The pipe considering; smoke thoughts. A glance at the wall clock. Minutes left.
“Maybe I hate her because she’s alive and my real mother is dead and the wrong one is still around. The one who thinks art deco is a guy who owns a deli.”
Nothing.
“I don’t know that I’m really all that bad off. I mean, I’ve got a friend in the hospital dying and that bothers me a lot. Overall I’m okay. It’s just I don’t sleep well and I worry about things.”
Long pause.
“You know, they say the reason writers write is that they’re fucked up about life having no form. And writing is about controlling … you know, what we wish it was. Am I rambling?”
Arms and legs crossed; flesh armor.
“I get scared sometimes. I don’t know who I am. I get so depressed. Angry. I don’t want to end up like my mother. I don’t want to … have that happen.”
The hour was up.
outline
FADE-IN:
8:04 A.M. Fifty miles off the English coast.
A.E. Barek hovers over storming sea. Huey blades gust craters on steel water. The cable is lowered. He firms mask against unshaven face. Looks at the chill expanse of Atlantic.
The British Airways 747 is down there. Full of people who were watching a movie, having a snack when the missile amputated half a wing.
Americans. Red-blooded innocents.
Only half an hour ago.
Maybe some are still alive. Managing on overhead masks. Struggling to live. Screaming under thousands of feet of icy water.
Waiting for someone like Barek; an angel in tanks and fins to descend, bring salvation.
He lets go of swinging cable, presses mask to face, drops into white-cap pewter.
In VOICE-OVER, we HEAR his thoughts; an unsparing venom. General Garris had called. Asked for help. Army couldn’t be involved. No soldiers; only an independent. Someone with no ties to anything; anyone. Someone terrorists couldn’t get to; leverage.
He swims deeper, the water aches; frigid gravity.
When he gets these defenseless civilian pawns out, the next move is simple. He’ll go to whatever terrorist group did this and “rip their throats out. Hang them upside down and peel one foot of skin for every passenger who doesn’t get out alive.”
He swims on, lower and lower, searchlight a glowing spear.
Finally, sees it.
A faintly blinking beacon.
He swims toward it. Closer. Begins to make out enormous, dinosaur curves. The doomed shimmer of metal. The little windows with people behind; a horrid aquarium.
Faces seem dead inside, hair floating in currents.
Barek enters the drowning fuselage through a shorn emergency hatch. Inside, cabin lights still glow and passengers sit, held by seat belts. Magazines and food float. A little girl’s doll does a slow-motion cartwheel.
All are dead.
Barek’s VOICE-OVER takes in the saltwater morgue, as he slowly swims toward the rear of the 747, passing dead travelers who stare ahead; features puffy, skin clay-white.
Barek’s professionalism corrodes.
“I hate this fucking job. The stupid, needless death I have to see. Greed and politics turn people into goddamned animals.”
He stops, braking with palms.
A little dead boy, clutching his mother, is seated beside the aisle. Barek looks at the little boy. Brings thickly gloved fingers, wrapped in insulating rubber, to the child’s eyes. Closes them. Then, notices the boy’s throat has been cut. The mother’s, too. The blood has been cleansed by sea. Barek doesn’t understand.
Swims on.
Shines his beam on other faces; necks. Many have been cut, violently slashed. Dangling masks have been sliced away from air hoses; beheaded.
“What the fuck happened here?” we HEAR him say. “Mass suicide?”
He swims on, hands pushing aside millions of gallons of sea. The beam zigzags from death mask to death mask, as he creeps toward the rear.
He passes on old priest, who seems to be staring at him, and Barek gasps as the man’s arms reach out, grab him! Barek stares in shock as the man looks at him pleadingly, body filled with water, oxygen mask expired.
Barek quickly offers his own mouthpiece and the priest’s gulping features suckle.
“Breathe!” Barek screams, in VOICE-OVER.
The man looks at him with terrified eyes, gripping Barek’s hand. But his grip weakens, his eyes seek rest.
“No!” Barek shakes the man, forcing him to breathe, not giving up. But the eyes shut, the mouthpiece slips out; jerking, writing nonsense on water.
Barek finds the man’s Bible tucked in the elasticized seatback pouch, places it in the man’s jacket, near his heart. Closes the priest’s eyes.
Drifts on, toward the jet’s rear.
Near the galley, he struggles to open the bathroom door that’s squeezed in its jam by water pressure.
Stops.
Hears bubbles from inside; a faint seepage.
“Someone’s alive,” we HEAR him whisper, listening hard for secretions of life; a trapped survivor.
He pulls harder; it feels welded.
He begins to pry with his survival knife, shiny serrations chewing door edge. Finally, the lock breaks and it opens.
Inside, a man dressed in deep-water scuba lunges at underwater half-speed toward Barek! The man clutches an upraised knife; struggles to cut Barek’s air hose.
Now Barek gets it. “They sent down a diver to kill whoever survived … sons of bitches.”
Barek pulls at the man’s mask. Manages to get his own knife gripped, cutting the man’s suit.
Frantic bubbles.
Then, blood, as the knife razors open rubber and flesh. The man leaks red into the sunken carrier as they fight.
Barek holds the terrorist’s forearm and cutting hard, sinks the blade into wrist, sawing through meat and bone. As the man’s face contorts, mouth screaming inaudibly, the hand separates, floating away, fingers still jerking in spasm; a macabre wave.
Barek waves back in deadly parody, stares into the man’s suffering face, and immediately plunges the knife into the man’s ear, twisting the upturned tip deeper, cutting cartilege, piercing eardrum.
The man’s mouth stretches in agony.
Bubbles chain.
Barek isn’t done.
He pulls the knife out. Watches reaction, as the man’s hand clamps over the useless ear and more crimson fluid escapes, thins in water.
Barek opens an automated fuselage hatch; the generator still alive. It slides up two feet and Barek forces the terrorist into the opening, halfway through.
As the man struggles, Barek brings the door down until it meets pliant skin under thick wet suit. The man’s eyes roll into his skull as his ribs are crushed. Barek watches as the door sections the terrorist into grisly book-ends.
The torso and screaming head float away outside. The bottom half remains trapped; bleeding Wicked Witch legs, under a fallen house.
A.E. Barek swims on through the horror-gloom, expressionless faces watching him go.
Alan leaned back, sipping at espresso. Reread the pages.
Would Andy Singer abide by any of this expense and carnage, he wondered. A man who emotionally responded to Cher albums. This sequence and what came after would come as a major shock.
Alan reread it, again.
It felt like the right tone for the opening sequence in the pilot. Jim Cameron meets de Sade.
But still … a fucking Catholic priest dying in close-up. Children with slashed throats. Waving goodbye to the hand, as it moved off, a five-fingered man-o-war. Then, poking out the guy’s eardrum. Pretty fucking cold, folks. But it was exactly what he’d promised the network, bless their massive fear zones.
A. E. Barek.
The independent agent. The warrior for hire.
There were holes you could use for a landfill but the network wanted it lurid; violent. Bigger than life, however illogical. Alan had asked them about why the terrorists or the government would send a diver when the people couldn’t have survived.
Because it was entertaining, they said.
Why make the priest live? Why a priest?
To add ethical presence, they said.
Plus, as Andy Singer reasoned, on the phone, when Alan told him some of the moves from the opening, “… people love religious figures who die heroically. Whole Joseph Campbell thing. Have you seen the tapes? You know what to do. And make some of the stewardesses attractive. Even if they’re dead, don’t make them look sickening.”
As usual, Andy’s advice was impeccably worthless.
Alan finished the espresso and walked to his kitchen, which overlooked La Cosa Beach Club. Fat children rode waves like vulgar pool floats and teenage girls gathered in gossiping squads, stuck to towels.
Alan rinsed out his baby mug. Chuckled a bit. It was strange writing this stuff. Odd how easily it came. He just stared at the sand-blasted ceiling and watched the parade of gore fuming from his mind; then wrote it down.
Cutting a guy in half. Sawing off a guy’s hand. Christ. He was amused by it, yet it all struck him as perverse. For a guy who never raised his voice, or beat any kind of drum you could hear, this pilot was a torture chamber in thousand-point Helvetica.
But A.E. Barek didn’t fucking care.
Alan was starting to get a kick out of this soldier of fortune who did whatever he felt like; used violence and brutality to solve everything.
It was fascinating.
transition
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lunch
Le Dome was filling up for lunch with fever and dread.
Method-trained food-stamps in red vests bustled, handing parking tickets to the lithium royalty who smiled and entered.
The restaurant held court on Sunset, just west of La Cienega, and was a preferred Vatican for deals and meals. Poseurs, profiteers, and sleek warheads came to suture deals that were stillborn, bleeding to death, or worse. They came to eat, to sell; to hang upside down in the cave, looking for blood.
The whole place had a shadowy, well-bred virulence and every glance hunted for something. Every nod collected rumor. Expiring starlets, nibbling on angel hair, made Down’s syndrome conversation with their managers, trying to grasp why they’d made the ugly, gunshot collapse from features to miniseries to guest shots on daytime. They would softly wipe Mattel faces and not see their lives oozing into the mausoleum as their managers listened sympathetically, scanning for new flesh and bones who sat at the bar, fresh in from nowhere. In time, the managers would carve their initials in virgin bones, use them up, and walk away, crunching through the sediment.
“Anyway, she tells me she can’t have oral sex because she’s got bulimia.” Jordan acted it out like a grim Mummenschanz routine. “Seriously. Not making this up. So, I say what’s the matter ’cause she’s just … staring at it like it’s junk mail and out of the blue she bites the head. So, I say, are you kidding me? And she gets so upset, she sticks her finger down her throat and launches a lovely evening at Spago onto the couch.”
Jordan sighed, surgically disassembling a plate of ahi; a fish bypass. “… now it looks like a piece of sectional vomit.”
He dumped some Pellegrino into his stomach. Let the bubbles punch pink lining. Shrugged with disappointment. “I don’t think the relationship is happening. How’s your lunch?”
Jordan sniffled, rubbed his nose with a napkin. The repaired septum w
as making him sound wrong.
“I tell you I just signed a gang? Bunch of real motherfuckers. Crips from south central. Some ex-Cannell guy is over at 20th doing a cop pilot, using street gangs.”
“Yeah, yeah. What is that? ‘Bad Blood’?”
Jordan nodded, pronging more dead fish.
“Anyway, he wanted the real flavor, so he was gonna hire this paroled gang member to give him input, right? So, I said, fuck that, and I signed another whole gang. Crips. These guys like whack white people on their day off just for a fucking goof. Anyway, I negotiated with Twentieth and the whole gang is under contract as consultants on the series.”
“Weird …”
“Pretty okay guys. For fucking cannibals with Uzis. I have ’em out to the house and they just hang on the sand, bring their ‘ho’s’ and get high. They’re about danger and anger … but they actually have a story sense.”
Jordan tensed, gestured with his eyes, changing the subject. A gay studio head, with Joan Collins’s skin, stepped politely to the table and Jordan traded quick hugs. They bartered gossip. Launched distortions. The older man wanted to be introduced.
“Victor, Alan White. Just sold a series to Andy Singer. Total fucking missile.”
“Well, consider us a target. We’re looking to get into the hour business, again.” The cashmere smile grew and he shoulder-squeezed Jordan goodbye, whispering something in his ear. Victor moved on, working the room; roaming for tactical blips.
Jordan sighed. “… guy’s a fuckin’ vulva. Been trying to get in my pants for a year. Got no respect for that …”
Alan knew that meant Jordan would find ways to make projects inaccessible to the guy unless the deals were huge. He could feel it; see it in his edgy expression. It was how Jordan manipulated people; punishing and rewarding. Among the devices of torture were unreturned phone calls and hot spec scripts withheld from voracious career hunger pangs; thrust under control-freak cuticles by omission. Top agents like Jordan were experts in mind control; B. F. Skinner Wise Guys.
“Tell you I’m thinking about leaving the agency? Maybe going back to Vermont. Make syrup for a living. I don’t know. Agents don’t talk film or life. They don’t talk art. Higher values. It’s all deals and pussy.”
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