Screenplay

by MacDonald Harris

  “Okay, I guess we can go now,” said the one in charge.

  They all went out together, disappeared into the darkness of the foyer. The theater was very quiet. Moira started to get up, and I pushed her down again. She looked at me questioningly but I said nothing. When I listened carefully I could hear it again: a kind of snuffling noise from the rear of the building, and a scratching as though someone was prying at the door with some kind of tool. There was a small sound of splitting wood, followed by a silence. Then I heard the creak of the door opening and the sound of Nesselrode’s feet mounting the steps at the side of the stage.

  For a moment Moira and I crouched there silently looking at each other. Then I crawled out on my hands and knees, lay down next to the wooden timber, and stuck my arm under the Screen at the place where the timber had lifted it a little. By stretching the arm as far as I could, and flattening my cheek against the gray rubbery surface, I managed to get two fingers onto the revolver and edge it over to the point where I could grasp it. Then I quickly crawled back and took my place beside Moira. She looked down at my hand and realized for the first time what I had in it. I turned the revolver over in my hand and fingered it curiously: an object from the real world.

  At that precise moment Nesselrode appeared, dimly visible in the gray light of the stage. His wisps of hair were awry and his overcoat was hanging open. I could see the small protruding eyes gleaming in the semidarkness. He turned his head hack and forth in little jerks, inspecting every corner of the stage. Then he caught sight of us; even when we were crouching down as low as we could the pile of lumber only concealed us to the shoulders.

  I stood up and pulled Moira after me. Since she was on my right I shifted the revolver to my left hand. The two of us confronted him across the pile of lumber. I was uncertain what was going to happen. I didn’t think it was likely that Nesselrode would use his power to help us out through the Screen, and in any case I didn’t feel like asking him for any favors. To help us through the Screen he would have to take our hands, and I had a horror of his touching Moira. I was determined not to let this happen.

  After he stared beadily at us for a moment or two he started to make his way around the pile of lumber. He was only a few feet from Moira now. I said, “Don’t touch her.”

  At that moment I transferred the revolver to my right hand, and he seemed to take notice of it for the first time. He looked alarmed. His nose twitched and his mouth worked.

  “What’s that? No. Real is not allowed.”

  But he kept sidling around the pile of lumber toward Moira, perhaps only mechanically now and unaware of what he was doing.

  I lifted my arm toward him, sticking it out at a stiff and stilted angle, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; it seemed to be stuck. I found the safety, pushed it off, and tried again. This time the gun fired with an ear-splitting detonation inside the confined space. There was an acrid smell and a veil of smoke that for an instant hid the view in front of me. When it cleared I wasn’t sure at first whether my shot had taken effect. Then I saw that Nesselrode was down on the floor of the stage groping around as though he were looking for something. He rolled over like a trained dog, got his knees up under him, and began crawling toward us again.

  “Come on.”

  I tried to pull Moira after me. But she lingered with her hand on the pile of lumber, staring at Nesselrode as though hypnotized. Before I could unwind her fingers from the boards Nesselrode had crawled up and seized my pants cuff; I could feel a heavy weight whenever I moved my right leg. I bent down to detach his hand, but it clung tenaciously. Dragging the both of them after me, I struggled my way inch by inch toward the Screen at the edge of the stage. When I came to it I realized that the reason I had no free hand was that I was still holding the gun. I transferred it to my back pocket and reached out toward the Screen.

  My fingers passed through it as though it were a veil of smoke. Nesselrode lost his grip on my cuff, but as soon as I moved the leg he managed somehow to clutch onto the other one. I found myself standing on one foot, trying to dislodge him from the other as though he were a piece of chewing gum. It was no good; he clung to me with fingers like iron and in the end I had to pull the three of us through the Screen together, in a clump of entangled bodies. A film like a grayish spiderweb seemed to cling to our shoulders for an instant. When Moira and I were through I gave an irritated kick and Nesselrode at last let go of my leg. I looked back and saw him lying prone over the frame of the Screen, his four limbs groping in an uncoordinated way. I dragged Moira away by the hand, off the stage and up the aisle through the dusty rows of seats. When I looked around again I saw that Nesselrode was still pursuing us, although he wasn’t making much progress. When he came to the stairs at the edge of the stage he fell prone again, with a sigh I could hear from the other end of the theater, and began slithering down them like a snake.

  “Hurry.”

  “I’m afraid,” she said.

  “It’s all right.”

  In the foyer, ahead of us and a little to one side, I could see an angular gleam of light. As I drew closer I saw what it was: the Chicano boys had broken the glass door and left a piece of plywood sagging down where they had pried their way through it. They had gone out, with the cops leading them, in the same way. The plywood was only hanging by a couple of nails and there was broken glass on the carpet.

  The opening was small and we had to stoop a little to go through it. Moira seemed reluctant. I went out first, drawing her after me by the hand, and then turned to help her through.

  “Watch out for the broken glass.”

  “Alys, Alys, I can’t go out there.”

  “Come on,” I urged her.

  With a gentle pressure I urged her through, one limb at a time, as though I were an obstetrician carefully and skillfully pulling a child from the womb. She came out with a sigh and straightened up, putting her hand to her head to smooth her disarranged hair. Then the two of us turned to the street in front of the theater.

  It was a typical hot summer day in Los Angeles. I had forgotten what it was like and at first the colors struck me with a shock. Bright reds, blues, greens, violets, and yellows glared in the sunshine. It didn’t seem real; it gave the impression of a world brightened with cheap chemical dyes, or a television screen with the color intensity turned up too high. The atmosphere too contributed to the effect of strangeness; there was a thin saffron-colored haze over the street and the air had a sweetish molasses taste in the mouth.

  I looked at Moira. She was unchanged, exactly as before; everything about her was black and white. There was hardly any color in her face. Her skin was white, her clothing white or very light beige; only her hair and her large expressive eyes were dark. She stood with a little smile looking out at the street before her.

  “It is awfully hot, isn’t it?” she said with a falsely bright cheerfulness.

  We were both reluctant to leave the shade of the marquee. But when I looked over my shoulder I seized her arm again and pulled her away after me. She turned to see what I was looking at and gave a little gasp. Painfully, inch by inch, Nesselrode was working his way out through the broken glass door. He was still on his hands and knees and he lifted first one limb and then the other as he oozed out through the glass and slithered to the sidewalk. He brought his second leg through and stretched out flat, his hands clutching at the concrete as though he were trying to pull himself forward with his fingernails. He looked up and swiveled his head until he caught sight of us. Then somehow he got into motion again and crawled slowly along on his belly toward us.

  We hurried away across the sidewalk. I caught sight of a taxi coming up the boulevard, and I stepped out onto the curb and raised my hand. It came to a stop with a squeal of rubber.

  As I opened the door and shoved Moira inside I turned and caught a last glimpse of Nesselrode. He had managed to cross the sidewalk now and had reached a bus bench at the curb. He crawled halfway up on this and groped out with his hands, as tho
ugh he hoped to clutch at us from a distance of fifty feet. But this effort was too much for him; he toppled sideways and collapsed until his forehead was resting on the bench.

  We got in and slammed the door after us. The driver was a black wearing a knitted cap pulled down over his ears in spite of the heat. The sides of his wrap-around sunglasses were stuck in under the cap. He said nothing and didn’t even bother to turn his head. The car went off with a squeal of tires, accelerating until the stores along La Cienega flashed by dizzily. The figure up ahead in the knitted cap bent over his wheel as though he were paying no attention to us.

  After a block or so, instead of speaking, he looked up and caught my eye in the rear-vision mirror.

  “Sunset Strip,” I told him.

  “Motel?”

  I could see his face in the mirror. I nodded.

  “I got a good one. Waikiki Palms.”

  “They give you a cut, I imagine.”

  “It’s a good one.”

  Moira, smiling and looking past the driver out the windshield, said, “I wish he wouldn’t drive so fast.”

  17.

  The palms were real, not plastic as I had expected. Once we were in the room with the door shut I found that it too was somewhat less squalid than I had anticipated. There was a large queen-size bed—this, I imagined, was what the driver had meant by saying it was a “good one.” Everything was pink, including the absolutely opaque window curtains and the bedspread. It was true there was a mural of Waikiki on the wallpaper covering one whole wall, but it was in pastels and not intrusive. The other amenities included a pair of fuzzy armchairs, a color TV, an immaculate bathroom, a “Do not disturb” sign to hang outside, and a chain on the door heavy enough to stop a medieval army with a battering ram. The carpet, of the same pink as the bedspread, was so thick that it came up to our ankles. The room was a little close and stuffy and I went to the window and turned on the air conditioner.

  Moira gazed around without curiosity. Almost absentmindedly, as though she were not aware of what she was doing, she took off her jacket and dropped it on the floor. When I saw her torn blouse with the buttons ripped off I was reminded of the violence of my desire the night before in the tent, and immediately it returned. We took up exactly where we had left off, as though the scene had stopped for a moment while the cameraman adjusted his camera or the lighting was changed. She undid the sole remaining button of the blouse and stood looking at me placidly and yet intently out of her dark eyes. I took her in my arms and she gripped me with a sudden and unexpected intensity, like a small wild animal; it was difficult for me to breathe. Then, just as abruptly, she released me and turned away. First she drew back the bedclothes, folding back the spread and the sheet exactly to the middle of the bed. Then she disrobed and lay down on the bed.

  In the bright light from overhead the whiteness of her body was dazzling. It extended to every part of her body, even the fingernails and toenails. The only exceptions were the large and shadowy eyes, the dark hair flung out over the pillow, and the small and inconspicuous triangle at the base of the pubic mound, itself as delicately fashioned as a Balinese sculpture in ivory. Her body seemed unexpectedly small when it was unclothed; the hands and feet might have been those of a child. The curves of her body were discreet, more boyish than exaggeratedly feminine. I switched off the overhead light leaving only the subdued glow of the bedside lamp. Then I lay down beside her, as though we were two children taking an afternoon nap.

  It was very quiet. Now and then I could hear the swish of a car going by on Sunset Boulevard. The only other sound was the subdued hum of the air conditioner, which was now sending out a flow of cool air that played refreshingly over our bodies. At first I found this sound vaguely disturbing, and after a while I remembered why. But since it didn’t stop when Moira took off her clothes, and since I retained the lucid intensity of my consciousness even now that I was naked myself, I ignored the sound and soon forgot it.

  Moira seemed tired. Even though she showed unmistakable signs of pleasure as I caressed her, she lay passively without moving her limbs or caressing me in return. In spite of the smallness of her body, of everything about her, I had no difficulty in carrying out my wishes with her. In fact it happened almost without my knowing it, as though her own desire drew me into her with the quick and gentle force of a sea anemone. Time passed. I was aware of it slipping away, minute after minute, stealing from us tiny fragments of our existence. Before me fragments of Moira’s face appeared, a pale and unfocused surface moving restlessly from side to side under my caresses. Everything was white; even when I closed my eyes there was nothing but whiteness. And when our pleasure at last rippled out and broke into waves, it too was white, as though a pure and perfect surface of snow was suddenly broken by the surging-up of a white violent animal. A snowquake: it convulsed, shivered, and died away slowly into a trail of tiny tremors. At that exact moment, while I was still lying in her arms, the air conditioner, having cooled the room enough to trip the thermostat, shut itself off and the humming stopped.

  I got out of bed, glanced at the clock on the night stand, and went to the TV and switched it on. Then I stood before it, still naked, waiting for it to warm up, while she watched me from the bed. “Alys. Alys,” she said in a curiously matter-of-fact tone. “You’re beautiful.” And after a moment, just as the gray screen before me flickered and broke into dull jabs of light, she added, “And very skillful.”

  It was six o’clock and I switched on the Channel 2 news. There was a war in the Middle East, and a congressman had been indicted for bribery. Two female twins in the San Fernando Valley were bringing a charge of rape against two male twins they had met at a twin convention. There was nothing about Nesselrode. After fifteen minutes I switched to Channel 4. It was much the same.

  “Perhaps they haven’t found him yet,” she said with her false brightness, still from the bed.

  I turned the TV off and began putting on my clothes folded over the chair. Moira’s own clothes—the jacket, the blouse, the riding breeches, and a scrap or two of underwear—were scattered over the carpet, one garment here and another there.

  She watched me. “Do you always put your trousers on last?” she asked with a bright curiosity.

  It struck me that she had never had any other real lover except Nesselrode, and he perhaps was a little odd in his habits.

  “Yes. Except for the shoes.”

  I pulled up the pants and fastened them. A trace of Nesselrode’s smell still lingered in the cuff where he had seized it; it had a rancid gamy odor like spoiled meat. There was a dark spot that looked as though it might be blood too, but perhaps it was only a smear of grease. I buckled the belt, then at my feet I noticed the small snub-nosed revolver, which had fallen out of my pocket when I undressed.

  I took it into the bathroom. There was a container marked “For razor blades only” but the opening was far too narrow. No chance of flushing it away down the toilet. After looking around for a while I found a small bag of waxy paper like those provided to throw up in on airplanes. It said on it, “For your convenience for sanitary napkins only.” Thinking that no one was likely to open this to inspect its contents, I put the gun in it and dropped it into the wastebasket. Then I went back into the bedroom.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “All right, Alys dear.”

  She made no move to get out of bed or to put on her own clothes. She seemed content just to stay there propped up in bed looking at everything, with her small pale breasts just showing over the edge of the bedspread. I took the key and went out. It was dusk, with a Turner-like sunset flaring in the sky to the west.

  On the sidewalk in front of the motel I got an evening paper from the coin rack, and then after a moment’s thought I went down the boulevard to a fast-food outlet and bought some chicken and french fries. With a glance around—I had developed all the instincts of a hunted criminal—I let myself back into the motel room. Moira was still in bed, following me w
ith her little smile as I set the food on the Formica counter and sat down to look at the paper.

  The only space large enough to unfold the paper completely was on the bed. I pulled up the chair and spread the paper over the pink bedspread. Moira’s slender legs, stretched out straight before her, hardly made a bump in the middle. I spent a quarter of an hour or so carefully searching through the paper. There was nothing, not even in the rubric of a dozen or so minor crimes buried in the middle of the second section. Most of the stories were the same ones we had seen on TV. There was a photograph of the twins gazing at each other in profile, one glancing coyly sideways at the camera. Moira crawled out from under the bedspread and looked at it curiously over my shoulder. “They probably just want to get into pictures,” she said. I went through the paper again, this time even searching through the sports and the financial section. There was not even one murder, which was unusual for Los Angeles. I folded it up and stuck it into the shelf under the night stand.

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  “No.”

  I opened the box and began picking at the chicken and french fries. There was also coleslaw in a paper cup which was to be eaten with a small plastic fork. I ate a piece or two of the chicken but I wasn’t really hungry either. After a while I turned my attention back to the TV. I noticed for the first time that there was a printed decal fixed to the front of the TV over the screen. It said, “This set equipped with private TeleCable service. For your enjoyment adult films are presented on Channel 46. For viewing by persons over 21 years of age only.”

  “What’s a Channel, Alys dear?”

  “It’s like a theater. There are all these theaters, and you can see them one after the other just by turning the knob.”

  “How nice.”

  I turned on the TV again, waited for it to warm up, and switched it to Channel 46. Then I slumped down into the chair beside the bed and we watched the so-called adult films. They were divided into various categories, and there was something for all tastes. Each category ran for about twenty minutes, and then there would be a title—white and shaky against a black background as in a silent film— and the next category would begin. In fact the pictures were silent, except for a toneless and vaguely sensuous music of the kind played in elevators. I soon had the categories memorized.