Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  A woman came out of the small office off to the side. It was furnished with old British military desks and slumping and torn chairs. She was dressed in a maroon and gold sari, and backless sandals. She was pleasant, but didn’t offer a beatific beam like Chahel and Dilip. A postcard with Lord Ganesh was slid under an electrical cord that was snaking down the wall. The hotel had been there long before the electricity. A calendar with mogul scenes printed with gold ink accents on onionskin paper was stuck on a nail, too high up on the wall. Cooks worked in a kitchen off the entry courtyard; that would be Ed’s new home part of each day.

  “That’s not our elephant is it?” I asked.

  Margaret hugged me. “No. We’ll teach you about tuk-tuks when you finally get here.”

  The interior of the hotel was open with a heavily carved staircase running up the center. A walkway circled each level. There was an open view to the lake at each level with rooms in a ‘U’ shape around the stairs. Most of the above-the-lines and actors were staying at the Lake Palace which floated in a lake below us. Ed hadn’t liked the idea of having to take a boat every time he felt like a wander. Like a lot of experienced people, they carved out privacy on location. The roof at the top of our place had heavy rafters painted with elephants and armies, lovers and flowers. It reminded me of a painted church ceiling in Hawaii, except for the elephants and lovers.

  Our top floor rooms opened onto a patio with a table and chairs where we would eat and work. My corner room overlooked the lake. The heavy black door had a huge dungeon looking lock hanging on the outside. The key was the size of my hand. The room was spacious, the walls painted in a deep saffron color with scenes of moguls and lovers parading around over the bed. It had a Western bathroom.

  The bed was a bigger pallet than the one in Delhi with four of the same slap-flat pillows. But the main event was a huge window seat that spanned the entire width of the room. It hung out over the lake. Divided from the rest of the room with carved arches and pillars, it was covered in purple fabric and piled with brightly colored pillows. What a perch. I could see living just there. I could see endless things with Jon there.

  I wandered out and found Margaret and Ed having chai on the terrace. Their room was identical to mine and directly across the way.

  “We don’t have wi-fi here,” said Ed. “But there’s a place a few doors down. And you can always use the production office.”

  I walked down to the internet cafe with Chahel and emailed Jon. I tried to paint a picture for him. I tried to write a little fantasy about us in the window seat, but I was only two days in. I wasn’t gone from Hawaii yet and I wasn’t in India yet. I was in a sky sandwich. I couldn’t find lucid words. I could only find troubled, lonesome and longing words. I didn’t want to worry him. So I told him we had an elephant in the front yard and that I hoped he was home safe.

  I dropped a note to Karin and Anna, and asked Anna to pass the word to Mom; we had never connected.

  The next morning Margaret and I got in a passing tuk-tuk with about ten other people. They’re the three-wheeled Indian taxi version of a clown car. In theory they seat as many people as a golf cart, in practice they seat as many people as are willing to cram in and hang on. It’s one place where the whole touching thing goes out the window, or would if there were windows, which is one reason so many people can hang on. It’s quick cheap transportation.

  We spent the day at the City Palace location making lists and talking to the facility liaison. The trades were setting up; the director had just flown in from her home in Mumbai. I may have been imagining it, but I could swear everyone was massaging their necks, probably the same pilot.

  The director looked like the royalty who had once lived in the palace. She had a salt and pepper bun. She wore a salwar kameez in deep blue with metallic gold accents. A dime-sized red bindi floated between her large dark eyes. I hate to say they were penetrating, but that’s what they were, maybe even entrancing. She was considered a top director. I knew her eyes could see. There were stories about her crews; they became like devotees who would do anything to make her happy. I had a vision of them throwing themselves over a cliff for her.

  “I don’t think anyone’s done that yet,” said Margaret. “But the cameraman on her last picture almost got run over by a train trying to get a shot for her.”

  “That sounds like every cameraman I’ve ever known,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “But she’d already called off the shot as being too dangerous. She’s not a crazy director; she never asks for something you can’t handle. That’s another thing, she wants us well ahead of her. She wants to hear about problems in advance.”

  The key people walked the sets and discussed problems and solutions. The work rhythm felt familiar; I grabbed onto work like a life raft.

  Dede was flying over for the start and had arranged a dinner for the head people that night. The director arrived in a glorious swirl of red silk sari. I was itching to buy a sari.

  The next morning I was up and out on our porch for chai with Ed. Margaret was tired and sleeping in for a while. She was okay. He thought she was letting down a little knowing we were sharing the load. He said to go ahead to the location; she’d catch up. I negotiated my first solo tuk-tuk ride. Chahel was already there, standing by for anything I might need. The Director swept in. We waited, metaphorically, for her baton to drop. It began. Margaret hadn’t been there for the start of the symphony; that was odd. The Director was good and we made every shot scheduled for the morning. Margaret pulled up with Dilip right in time for lunch. She was rested and her usual cheerful self. The afternoon went off without a glitch.

  I stopped at the internet cafe. Jon had written back. He must have heard my subtext because he said to just work; to let the parallel universes take care of themselves for a while. His words sounded so normal and grounded; he wasn’t adjusting to a foreign land.

  I needed to spend some time on the sets at night. Ed prepared an early dinner of California cuisine. He and the owner were doing culinary cross training in the kitchen. A few Indian spices infused the lemon chicken sauce. After dinner Dilip ran me over to the location. I wandered through rooms with just the weak electric light seeping in from a few windows that weren’t blacked out by the lighting guys. I could sense the lives lived in the shadows. The whisper of silk and intrigue, bare feet on worn marble floors, the soft sounds of bangles and bells, murmuring behind closed doors, furtive lovers, men’s voices planning adventures and defenses, women’s voices doing the same, children playing at both. The walls and furnishings smelled of incense, spices, bloody births and bloody deaths, and the smoke from oil lamps. Our husband and wife characters, trapped in their arranged marriage, made me think of Stroud. It was nice to feel no charge. I didn’t regret his interlude; there would be no Jon without Stroud. I hoped he was happy.

  I was beginning to think there are no accidents. Despite Jon’s admonishment to let the other tracks take care of themselves, I was spending my days and nights slipping in and out of the parallel universes of India and our Western crew. It’s even more convoluted when you’re consumed with creating a foreign world inside itself, separated only by time, where the actors answer to two names. Both worlds were places where there is only the barest space between religion, philosophy, and fixing dinner. One nice thing about working in India, there are still a lot of things on the shelf that were there hundreds of years ago, even thousands of years ago, if the modes of transportation were any indication. It was easy to find all the little things that would indicate that people were alive and well in the world we were creating.

  A month passed in a blink. I smelled like India. I was dusty with India. I was sweating India. I drank chai instead of coffee, lemon soda instead of wine. My clothes came back from the laundry wallah clean and pressed, and smelling of India. I left my sandals covered in monkey, human, and cow dung outside my room door. Every few mornings they were clean; someone had washed them while I slept. At least half the crew was holdin
g tight to the West. They dressed in Western clothes. They hung out in the most Western bars they could find and complained that they still couldn’t find a decent club sandwich. I don’t believe in going native, but their superior attitude toward the Indian crew and help was annoying. How could they not make room in their heads and hearts for all that surrounded us?

  One day bled into the next, then days into weeks, weeks into months. Sometimes day shoots, sometimes night. Margaret and I worked while Ed kept the food and good cheer coming. Jon and I emailed daily. The loneliness swept through us like tides as we told each other about it. It helped. Sometimes he felt so distant in his steady clean world of ocean, space, and “A” restaurant ratings. Most of the time I thought I could hear his voice in his emails. He sent a stream of pictures of everything that came along during his day. It kept me tethered. He threw in a few x-rated images involving my dress, which always got me going. He sent me a picture of a coconut wearing my underpants from Honolulu, courtesy of Victor and Kaia. They’d found them in the side pocket of the car during their last trip over. They wanted to know when the baby was coming. I couldn’t return the favor; my technology was shared with hundreds of people.

  I followed along as he planned to break ground on a new housing project. It looked interesting; they were going native sustainable. They actually looked like huts. I told him I’d love to get involved somehow when I got back. The fifteen and a half hour time difference and our uneven work schedules made it almost impossible for us to make any sense of phone calls. We were walking a long road and we were old enough to know that we needed our rest.

  I made regular postings to Dede. And kept in touch with Eric and Anna. They were completely immersed in school for her, and traveling to 10Ks for Eric. She lugged books and studied while Eric ran around. Their kids were fine. They saw Sam and Sam once a week; that whole family seemed to be getting lighter. They said Ted had laughed the first real laugh they’d heard from him in ten years.

  Eric had run a background check on Jon. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about that. Anna said he couldn’t help himself; but that the good news was that Jon was solvent and had only one name if you didn’t count the number of times it showed up as John instead of Jon. She said to ask him about the high school pot thing.

  Eric set Mom up with email and she had started communicating with me. She never mentioned the ink job. I knew from Anna that she’d fallen off the wagon again, but had climbed right back on. She didn’t mention that either. She hoped I was having a wonderful experience. She said Arthur was fine. I wondered if his patience was wearing thin.

  Karin and I went back and forth; they were making progress. She was getting to a point where she could look at Oscar and the other woman wasn’t her first thought. She didn’t think she’d forget. I thought about what Margaret had said about smothering Ed; there are some things that should be left in the dark.

  Every afternoon a little man brought around chai in a delicate wire holder, like a small milk bottle holder from the 40s, with individual clear tea glasses clinking in the slots and covered with small squares of cotton fabric.

  SIXTEEN

  Our last day in Udaipur dawned chilly with clean air; we got a last perfect sunrise shot between palace towers. The afternoon was spent striking sets. We were moving on to pick up our camel and oasis shots. There would be angry hoards stampeding around in the desert.

  We were leaving most of our things at the hotel and heading out to a ranch owned by an Indian man and his Dutch wife. They had horses and were on the edge of a large reserve with a lake. Small villages, that probably haven’t changed much in the last thousand years, surrounded them. We would only be there a week, camels willing. I knew absolutely nothing about working with camels. I’d been sent pictures and had been put in charge of camel wardrobe.

  Working in India is difficult. The travel is hard, even with all the money and support in the world. Margaret seemed more tired than usual.

  I called Jon. I’d given pretty darn good phone sex when I had the chance. He seemed genuinely touched, so to speak. I told him I might start a sideline as a call center; really go Indian. He thought I should give that a pass and just come home and work through my issues with him and a garter belt.

  “Hi,” I said. “We’re going to be out of touch for a week. I wanted to hear your voice.”

  “How’s it going there?”

  “Good. We’re ahead of schedule. Margaret is still way off, but she’s soldiering on. How about with you?”

  “It’s fine. The usual. It’s getting on to a quieter time for us.”

  “How’s the housing project coming?”

  “We hired a designer who can’t hear.”

  “I saw the problem in your pictures. He’s doing some kind of Tommy Bahama thing for your little huts. It looks spendy.”

  “Tommy’s not going anywhere. We’re already fighting the cost uptick dealing with round rooms.”

  “Did you get my suggestion about floating the service modules rather than going custom?”

  “Yeah, thanks. We’re pushing the pencil on that now. It looks good.”

  “You want a little talking too before I go out with the tribesmen?”

  “Not now, Jesus, I’m at work. That last time was unbelievable. It took days to clear my head of the Coochie Goddess.”

  “Could you hear me laughing?”

  “I couldn’t hear anything. I’m pretty sure I was deaf at that point. All systems were focused elsewhere. It didn’t even throw me off when you added in her goat consort. I don’t want to think about where you learned to talk like that.”

  “I’ve never talked like that in my life. It’s something about you.”

  Okay, so shoot me. But I didn’t have to throw coochie out with the bath water. Coochie was mine. And I did add the goat. If I had to start completely over I’d never get past square one.

  ”Call me when you get back to civilization,” he said. “And leave the nice Indian men alone out there.”

  “You remember that?”

  “Trying not to.”

  “I miss playing with you, Jon. You doing okay?”

  “I tell myself you’re away at war.”

  “I kind of am. The usual broken promise stuff is going on around me. There’s going to be some public confessing and drink throwing when we get home. Not for us though.”

  “Nope, we’re good.”

  “Are you going to have a bachelor party?”

  “Why would I?”

  “I thought guys do that, last chance.”

  “I’m not going to prison. I wouldn’t marry you if I needed a last chance.”

  “I guess this whole shoot is like a last chance.”

  I could hear my crazy insecurity bouncing around in space. I didn’t even know where it was coming from.

  “What’s going on H?” he asked. “You okay?”

  “I don’t know, I think so. I don’t know where that came from. I’m worried about Margaret. I have a bad feeling about it, but no one else is worried. I think this is just starting to wear on me. We’re all getting really tired; you can see it in everyone’s eyes. A lot of people are sick. People are getting skinny with parasites. Tempers are short.”

  “We’re all worried now that we’re moving into an area with a lot of Dengue Fever. They’re haranguing us about using the mosquito repellant they’re passing out. They want us to wear special clothes they’re shipping over. No way. It’s all stiff slimy safari gear soaked in toxins. Nobody’s shooting at us, but it’s like being at war.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Two months. We move to Varanasi after this. The story is going to play out on the banks of the Ganges. Tell me news. How’s Chana?”

  “She broke up with her boyfriend. I’m not sure the new one is an improvement.”

  “Oh, Dad. Is anyone going to be okay with you?”

  “I doubt it. She wants to visit you there.”

  “That’s probably not a good idea unless y
ou come too. I’d love to show her the country, but I don’t have a minute to spare. And I don’t want her to get sick.”

  “You know I’d like to, especially hearing you like this, but I still need to take her for a few interviews on the mainland.”

  “Next time.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Though I hope it will be a while before we do this again.”

  “Me too. I miss you, Jon. I miss you in a way I don’t quite understand. It was like I filled up on you and now it’s almost spent. It’s like even my vivid imagination is going dull.”

  “I don’t like to hear that. We’ll see each other soon.”

  “I know.”

  “Hannah, I don’t want to raise kids alone.”

  “I’m not sure I want kids.”

  “I know, and that’s fine too. It’s just been on my mind.”

  “I can’t think about that now.”

  “No. We’ll talk about it when you get home.”

  “My brother actually ran a background check on you.”

  He started laughing. “Anything I should know?”

  “What about the high school pot thing?”

  He laughed harder. “I was going five miles an hour in a twenty-five. Dead giveaway. How’d he get that? I was underage, it’s supposed to be sealed.”

  “Nothing is beyond his reach.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. What about you? What would I find if I dug into your past?”

  “Nothing. I’m as pure as the driven snow.”

  “You mean you never got caught? Or your brother went in and deleted everything?”

  “No need for deleting. Anyway, most of the stuff I did wasn’t against the law law, it was against the laws of good judgment. I was always worried I’d worry my mother. I don’t think she was ever worried about me. Figure that one out.”

  “Get some rest,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”

  I had a small cottage at the ranch. A magnificent horse was standing around waiting for his close up. He kept sticking his head in the window to say hello. I pinched some carrots from the mess area for him.