“So—may I ask? About the archive?”
Billy, trying to focus, smiled and said shoot.
Casting her eyes down, sheepish and concerned: “You walked out that day to go on your trip… And, like, never came back.”
“Withdrawal in disgust’s not the same as apathy, my dear.”
“I was afraid you’d died, or something.”
“Born again.”
Cautious anew. “Oh-really, now.”
“In a metaphorical manner of speaking. Not like you’re thinking. I’m not one of these godly Southern crackers.”
“So what happened?”
Billy, quick to answer. “No-no, it’s not that something happened-happened. I chose to exercise the free will I had at my disposal. You realize, Marleigh, I was only doing that job for fun.” Leaning in. “What you must understand is that I’ve got a veritable buttload of family money.”
“Well, la-ti-da.”
“It is what it is. But when the wind’s blowing sour, I ankle the project. Sometimes I do it just to show people how easy it is for me to leave them hanging. How little I need them.”
Marleigh, backing away from his hot breath, changed the subject. “I was disappointed I never got a chance to talk to you about that Lebowski paper you were writing for the conference.”
That stopped him in his tracks. Made his meatwhistle sing out of key.
Shame—he had finished his paper except for the citations, but he’d done nothing about preparing a presentation. He had bailed. Instead, he got drunk with Ruck. And come back to this life of lassitude and liquor.
He couldn’t tell her any of it. “God—I didn’t make you read that dreadful screed, did I?”
“I did get around to it.”
“Well?”
“And I watched the movie again. And—well.”
“Be honest, now.”
“I dunno.”
Billy, his heart thumping, seized the moment. Brash, gripping her forearm, leaning in, febrile and vibrating with goose-pimpled excitement and certitude, his charisma gushed like a tapped hydrant on a summer afternoon in a poor urban neighborhood. “We must go discuss this over scalding hot dark water. I still have time to revise the paper before publication. I need your help, Marleigh.”
Hesitancy. “Um. I was gonna go in anyway. I guess.”
Without waiting for a reply, Billy pulled her toward into the Carolina Beanery. He hoped to introduce her to Roy Earl, check in with the bossman, who had stopped returning Billy’s late-night, drunken calls. Probably just busy.
The Beanery, with the university shut down for almost a month, sat all but deserted. Ceiling fans turned lazy in wintertime reversal mode. The black-and-white floor had been waxed. Businesses did repairs and chores while the students, their financial lifeblood and customer base, were on break.
With the Old Market in a state of relative slumber, the barista behind the counter, bored as hell and doing a crossword puzzle, leaned on a stool chewing her lip. An Asian guy sitting in the back corner on his Mac took advantage of Roy Earl’s complimentary WIFI, tapping furiously, probably coding; a middle-aged guy in a rumpled suit came shuffling out of the bathroom, adjusting his belt; he picked up one of the alt weeklies and went outside with his espresso to smoke. Jazz played on the satellite radio—good, weird stuff; Coltrane Live in Japan, one of the tracks where his sax sounds like a honking donkey, perfect for a hipster coffee shop. The whole affair, redolent of baked goods and roasted coffee. Heaven on earth, a place of warmth and life. Of friendship.
Marleigh and Billy ordered coffee and repaired over to a rear corner table where Billy’d seduced many a grad student and fellow Southeastern staff member, erudition and the miraculous shank of veiny viscera nestled along his thigh friends in this regard—the corner table offered cover for placing a willing hand atop a khaki-colored polish sausage; to let them know it wasn’t amateur hour.
Small talk, catching up, sipping coffee; Billy’s future, a series of outrageous exaggerations regarding the DC gig. Saying that after he gets his dad elected to the U. S. Senate, the most exclusive club in the world, adding how he had an agent for a screenplay who thought a seven-figure deal lay in the future, with options for not one but three different other screenplays and options for sequels. Offers to set up first-look production deals at both Paramount and Universal. Leaving Columbia for good, heading west. Making all his dreams come true.
“That’s Columbia, the city,” he clarified, “and not the movie studio, which is Sony now anyway.”
“No–I got it.”
“So that’s the real reason I quit. Sorry for the coldness of the gesture.”
Marleigh, herself a budding filmmaker, lit up with amazement: “I’m so excited for you! I can hardly believe it.”
“It truly is unreal. You have no idea how much.”
Marleigh extolled the virtues of having become what she termed a “Netflix ho,” renting so many films she’d not only missed out on, but screening many other interesting deep-catalogue titles. Running through a list of auteurs, some of whom were lacking in familiarity to Billy.
Alternately jazzed and envious of the young woman’s knowledge. A little green.
A little titillated.
Or, a lot:
Thinking, Marleigh=Libby.
Trying not to consider such thoughts.
But listen to her! Yes, impossible to deny: A partner in cinema. Like Libby would have been. This, what he needed. All she needed was persuasion.
A universe of possibilities opened before his eyes, a swirling fractal maelstrom of infinite forgiveness and spiritual satori awaiting—oh sweet mystery of life, I have found thee.
“So anyway, Lebowski?”
“By all means.”
“I get what you’re saying, about how the movie is real symbolic, and the political stuff, the cowboy narrator character—?”
“The Stranger?” Billy’s arm-hairs, stippling. “Omniscient, wise, all-seeing? I can dig it.”
“Yeah, omniscient and all-seeing.” Marleigh, teasing.
“Hardy-har.”
“A narrator who knows. We can trust the Stranger. Can’t we?”
“One presumes so.”
“So there’s narrator-as-God, all those White Russians, and the nihilists, as your paper says. And then ‘Jesus,’ a flashy pederast, a character of not only questionable fashion taste but also morality, serves as an extreme to which we may compare the political extremes, ironic in bearing but representative of deviancy in the populace. Walter, meanwhile, is the reactionary right-wing, the Dude a disaffected, failed hippie left-wing, would-be icon—that whole Port Huron Statement bit. And poor Donnie, he’s caught in the middle between the extremes, another clueless everyman.”
“Like most regular folks.”
“Nobody in real life gives a shit about politics.”
“Then there’s the Big Lebowski, who epitomizes wealth and power.”
“In the end we see him as not only a literally handicapped person, but a fraud to boot. A commentary on your own class, as it happens.”
Billy, pleased, but trying not to show it too much. Trying not to seem eager-beaver, blow the whole plan. “Yes, yes. Go on.”
“So I have to say: I don’t think you followed through on your thesis.”
“Wait—what?”
Drawing in a breath, her cheeks bloomed crimson before she pressed ahead. “Not that it’s wrong, or anything. Just not quite—finished.”
She had him there. “It was still in draft form. You’ve nailed me on that. I couldn’t find the—didn’t have the—too busy.”
“You had the big preservation project. The one I was working on. You know they dropped it and canceled my internship,” she said, downtrodden.
He didn’t hear her. He wasn’t listening. “That’s it—I was too busy. You remember. The media archive. Meetings up the hill. Preserving the films. The movies. No way I could finish that paper. Too much else. Family stuff. All really boring. What
’s important in life? Some dumb movie? After all?”
“Well—I get it.” Marleigh, puckish and innocent. “But the paper, it was ironic how you left out a discussion of the one thing that, like in the movie, could have tied everything together,” eyebrows hinting.
Billy, slapping his forehead. “The Dude’s rug—‘it tied the room together’.”
“So what do you think it means?”
Billy, musing, morose and moronic, felt his eyeballs pointing in two different directions. He needed another toot of nitrous; a headache creeping in. “Hell if I know how the gosh-darn rug ties it all together. Do you?”
“Maybe.” She held up a finger, chipped turquoise nail polish, a mass of bracelets and other costume jewelry, light from the tiny halogen spots hanging from the ceiling glinting off her piercings. Patches, buttons—punk band logos, leftist political slogans, NO WHINING with the red negation slash on her right shoulder.
“So you’re already talking about how these characters represent these different political factions, right? And what sets everything in motion is The Dude’s rug, pissed upon by dumb hit-men who’ve mistaken him for a rich man who happens to have the same name. But anyway, again and again he hear The Dude invoking the rug’s ability to ‘tie everything together,’ and as much as you want to say that, like in a mystery, it’s some kind of red herring, I see it as the central symbol instead.”
“Like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin-dealie?”
“No, not at all. More like an objective-correlative. The MacGuffin is simple narrative misdirection. Sleight of hand.”
“Oh, sure, sure.” Billy. thinking her terminology sounded familiar from Max de Lisle’s scriptwriting classes, concepts lost to time and inattention; thinking her like Libby reincarnated. “Right on all points.”
“I was thinking about your thesis, and politics, democracy, governance, whole bit.” Tapping the chipped nail against a coffee cup rim. “And like, what if the rug is the underlying idea behind our society—our Western style democracy, which is codified by a central document, a manifesto, a constitution. Commandments, of a kind. Sacred. Sacrosanct. In the case of this country, protection of the idea of every so-called man created equal, at liberty to be happy, to prosper, have redress of grievances, et cetera. But retaining the ability to create law. Maintaining order. Not forging happiness at the expense of anyone else, but in partnership. The golden rule. I mean—you yearn to be free, yes, but not free enough to, say, yell fire in a crowded theatre, or hurt somebody on purpose, or drive drunk, or, or—”
“Drive drunk?” Billy, his insect antennae twitching, leaned forward. “What the heck do you mean by that?”
Marleigh, taken aback by the brusque tone. “Just an example. Of—the violation of the social contract.”
Suspicious. “Go on.”
Getting back on track, she continued, “Think about it. The Dude’s rights are trampled on left and right—pun intended—while he tries to regain the rug, with it providing him some ideal of security, an underpinning of order and reason. Linus’s blanket, like. But more than that. A foundation that ties everything together, the disparate pieces of his life, into a manageable whole.
“And so maybe what they’re saying is that by all of us choosing sides, or being forced or otherwise persuaded to choose sides, we’re forgetting the reasons we’re all in this relationship to begin with—if there are reasons. In any case: We’re all human, after all. We all have to eat. We all have to pee and take poops,” demure, giggling. “We all have to die, ultimately. Our country—our young country, compared to most—was supposed to be a new way of doing all that, or at least it was way back then. A new kind of social contract, building on the protections first established in, I guess, the Magna Carta? Not a history major, here. But, a new order. A new world order.”
Billy, dumbstruck by her discourse. “So—?”
“So, maybe the rug literally does represent our constitution. Or the Declaration, or any codifying document. Like those dumb thugs enforcing a pornographer’s sense of financial injustice, they’re pissing on what the country’s supposed to be—a democracy, where everyone, if they want, has an equal say, has rights, has a fair shot. The right to be left alone. The right to be right. The right to be left. To pursue happiness. To body art, or public demonstrations, or,” lowering her voice, “to smoke dope. Or, like The Dude, to smoke dope and bowl.”
“Retaining those rights’ll be a challenge. Look at the war on ‘some’ drugs.”
“Some people are selfish.” Shrugging, a half-smile. “Like what they want is the only thing that matters. Well—fuck that, I say.”
Billy, desperate to disagree, to say she was wrong, but he didn’t have a blessed idea how the damned rug metaphor worked.
Shut up and praise her—she’s brilliant.
And yet his words came haughty and dripping with condescension: “Well, that’s one person’s way of interpreting it all, one supposes. And now, the point’s moot—no more academic papers for this moneyed and successful scriptwriter, not now that I’m jetting off to the big time. It’s like hometown heroes Hootie and the Blowfish, on that night they took off in the lear jet from Columbia Metro to play the Letterman gig in New York—the moment of arrival.”
Disappointed. “Just one person’s opinion.”
Billy, slapping his thigh. “I’ve got to see it again.”
A smile, impish. “The rug?”
“No, silly—the movie. You game?”
“Oh—no. I can’t.”
“C’mon. You can’t say no.”
Marleigh, blinking, hesitant. A tiny head-shake. “I have work to do.”
“Now, Marleigh.” Billy, tilting his head, willing his eyes to twinkle. “Over the holiday break?”
“I’m starting to try to prepare for the spring. I’ve got scriptwriting.”
A welling of emotion. “You do?”
“My first writing class. And to tell the truth—?”
“Yes?”
“I would love to pick your brain sometime. Talk scripts.”
Blown away anew. “Could be arranged.”
“I want to read the sci-fi epic.”
“I have a copy up in the condo. You can take it. Give me notes.”
“You—want notes from me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Your news, it’s just amazing. Congratulations, Dr. Steeple. But—I shouldn’t come up to your condo.”
Collecting himself at her resistance. Mercy. “Look, we can talk scripts all freaking night, girl. We can talk until the world dies. Since we’re not colleagues anymore, it’d be okay to hang out. It’s huge—my script, that is. Enormous.”
Confused. “More than a hundred and twenty pages?”
“Oh, quite so, my dear.”
“The pros say that’s suicide.”
Ignoring her concern—the lies, no agent, no finished script; who cared how long the damn script.
“Marleigh?”
“Uh-huh?”
“So, you get high?”
Her eyes, widening and uncomfortable. “Under certain conditions.”
“Good enough, then, fair maiden. Shall we?” Billy rising, chivalrous, offered a hand she accepted, but only with great reluctance. “Conditions await.”
Eighty-Four
Creedence
Roy Earl and Creedence, strolling toward the Beanery together, smiled and chatted in soft tones. At the crosswalk his hand had rested on the small of her back for a brief instant while a motorcycle passed; the skin still tingled at his touch.
Inside the coffee shop, Creedence, breathing in aromas of fresh baked goods, thought she shouldn’t eat another bite. They’d had dinner and a movie, a silly, loud action jam he’d chosen.
She felt so comfortable with him. Already. Like being at home.
“My word—that smell’s heavenly.”
“Scones are coming out for tomorrow morning. Want one?”
“Yummy,” patting her stomach. “But since I move
d back in with Mama, I’ve gotten big as the side of the house.”
“You look fine to me.”
“Quit it, now.”
Bright-eyed, bashful, sincere. “I ain’t just saying. You’re beautiful. I always thought so.”
Creedence, embarrassed but thrilled by the compliment. “Thank you.”
The first-daters, at the movie: Roy Earl, reaching over and putting his arm around her, red hair spilling across his forearm. She scrunched over next to him. Creedence, warm all over, worried he could feel the pulse beating in her neck.
Roy Earl, chubby but handsome, was no-question successful. He told her he wanted to franchise his smoothie stands. Maybe the Carolina Beanery, too. “One in every foodcourt around the country would be a good start.”
He would be a millionaire, soon.
Sitting across from one another in the deserted coffee shop, with closing time nigh, they made small talk; she discussed her mother’s illness, and he looked heartbroken.
“Not Miss Eileen.”
She held back a sob. “Yeah. I can’t talk about it.”
“I always did love her fried chicken, when me and Dobbs would be over.”
“I remember those days.”
With his manager busy breaking down, wiping, counting, straightening and running the dishwasher, Roy Earl enjoyed the last mocha of the day, a decaf; Creedence ordered a cappuccino. Grimacing at first, expecting the drink to be sweet. Roy Earl, explaining how if she wanted it that way, she’d better add sugar.
“Mama drinks Maxwell House. We ain’t got a Carolina Beanery in Chilton.”
“Not yet you don’t.”
Sweet, Creedence thinking, being the operative word for Roy Earl Pettus, along with thoughtful and attentive; feeling as though the first date the most meaningful on which she’d ever gone. Dinner at the upscale Italian restaurant also lovely. Roy Earl, asking her questions there, and in the theatre queue before the movie started, and on the drive back to the Old Market as well.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 53
