Memphis Movie

by Corey Mesler

  But, no. It wasn’t literally true. There was Hope. He laughed to himself. There is always Hope. She seemed to float above it all. She was so pure, so professional, so truly an artist, that Eric felt honored just to know her. Should he call her tonight? No. She had left the Pyramid today nearly in tears. She glanced once toward Eric, Lot’s wife’s stolen peek. Her expression said it all: we tried to build art on a dunghill. Or that’s how Eric read it.

  Eric felt near the end of something. Not just the movie, which part of him—that stone hard, cold part of him that did things, that created—knew could still be finished, could even be made great. Eric felt the end was near, as if Charon awaited outside instead of some lackey driver named Hassle Cooley. What had happened to Hassle Cooley? What was the last conversation he had had with the nutty driver? Cooley was explaining to him that in the complete Zapruder film—which he had seen—Kennedy lives. Now, like JFK, Hassle had disappeared also.

  And, in thinking about disappearances, Eric’s mind conjured another vision: a young sprite, barefoot and fey, dancing in the rainbow mist of the sunrise. Where had he seen that recently? That Ridley Scott film with Tom Cruise? No, it wasn’t on TV, was it? Eric sat on the edge of his bed and held his head in his hands. His mind wouldn’t cohere. Then he saw her whole: Camel’s amanuensis. If that’s what she was. Camel’s sylph. She danced on light.

  And then—and Eric knew it before it occurred—his father sat across from him, studying his son’s despair with the cool of the dead. His face, craggy and beautiful, seemed to hang in the room like another light. Like a secondary image caused by signal interference. Eric could only raise his head and meet its eye—a cold eye, Yeats’s cold eye.

  “Eric,” his father said. The voice was less distinct. Perhaps he was at the end of his haunting.

  “Father,” Eric said back. He felt weary, too weary to even parlay with his dead father.

  “You feel a failure. You feel that you have reached the end.”

  “The end . . .” Eric said. He was losing steam.

  “When God closes a door he opens a window.”

  “Right, so you can jump out of it,” Eric said.

  Eric’s father’s ghost chuckled.

  “That’s good,” he said. “That’s very good.”

  Now Eric had to smile. He made the ghoul laugh. Making the Ghoul Laugh. That’s not a bad title.

  “Eric, listen to me now. I don’t have much time left.”

  “Ok, Dad.”

  “When you were young, son, you had such ambition. Such raw ambition. It frightened your mother and me somewhat. You were so driven. You wanted to read the right books, know the right art, see the right movies. You fell into existentialism as if it were a calling, like Mormonism or being a butcher. And you saw the world as an absurd place, a place run by morons. And you made Sartre’s nausea your nausea. You see? You see what, as a parent, I was forced to confront. Refute Sartre? No, I couldn’t. I could only hope that out of that pool of nausea you would rise and do something significant. And, for a while, you did. Your ambition held your nausea in check, and you added something to the old workaday world. You made films. Now, I like your films, Eric. I always have. If I never said so, well, chalk it up to an old man’s reticence, the reticence of my whole generation. But, now, Eric, the old nausea is back. You are finding the world strange and unwelcoming. Eric, it is an absurd world, full of alien objects and strange people who will always be strangers. Still, why should we find this nauseating? Have you asked yourself that? If it’s a given that the world we inhabit we will never fully understand, isn’t that cause for celebration? The artist must tackle that strangeness, without letting it rub off on him, without being consumed by the bêtise.”

  Eric’s father’s ghost rested. His eyes seemed rheumy and lifeless.

  Why was he lecturing me about Sartre here at the end? Eric thought. Was this speech left over from his time on Earth, something he had always wanted to say but could not?

  “Eric, I am your father,” the ghost now said, faintly. “That’s all I came back to tell you. I am your father and that never goes away, is not diminished even by death’s darkling cloud. Be brave, son. It’s all we have left . . .”

  The voice was even weaker now. Eric leaned in.

  “All . . . we . . . have . . . Eric . . .”

  The room was so dim Eric was not sure the specter was still there. He was about to reach out his hand when it spoke again.

  “And, Eric. Love those women. Love them, son.”

  And he was gone. The room seemed brighter suddenly.

  Still Eric felt alone. He lay back on the pillow, his hands behind his head. He did feel nauseated. Was that only suggested by the ghost? Eric thought about dying. He thought about the work he was leaving behind, his legacy. He saw that some of it was good; he was happy some of it would go on without him.

  Then he sat up. If he was to die, here, now, in this rented house in Midtown Memphis, who would speak for him? Who would write his obituary?

  And, instinctively, he reached for his nightstand book. It was not there. Someone had taken his Samuel Beckett. In its place was a book entitled We Are Their Heaven: Why the Dead Never Leave Us.

  “Sandy,” he whispered into the space around him. And then a moment later, “Oh, Mimsy.”

  78.

  Interior. Camel’s bedroom. Crepuscular desinence.

  As Camel’s life leaked out of him, he began composing a poem in his head. The poem would spin out like gossamer or like the indurate substance with which caterpillars cocoon themselves. The poem would be his eternal shroud.

  Lorax sat on the bed next to her Camel. She was as naked as Eve. Her face was so lovely that Camel avoided looking at it lest it break his poem apart like so much dreamstuff.

  When the poem was finished Camel was not sure whether he would find the strength to write it down. Lorax had surrounded him with flowers from their garden, virtually stripping it bare. It was now a field of stalks. The vegetables had all been harvested and distributed around the neighborhood. In the coming weeks they would be consumed in households as far away as the Evergreen Historical District and the Cooper-Young Historical District. Folks, portly and gaunt, happy and morose, jaunty and earthbound, would spear a bit of squash or zucchini or banana pepper, and chew it with newfound thoughtfulness. There would be words burning and bubbling in heads formerly unpoetic. There would be linguistic splendor sprouting on tongues formerly tame. And there would be gastric tempestuousness born that would remind many Memphians that they were alive and animal and walking around in a flesh suit that worked 85 percent of the time and that was a damn lovely thing. Such was the magick of Camel’s gardening.

  Now, Camel turned his kindly face toward Lorax, his salvation and the joy of his last days. He smiled their secret smile and Lorax let a tear fall, one tear as crystalline as a glint from an icicle.

  “Is this the final time, Camel?” she asked, holding his heavy, hoary hand in hers.

  “Yes, Sweet Lorax.”

  “Are we to be sad?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Sweet.”

  “Did the movie do this, my Camel?”

  “How do you mean, Dear?”

  “Did it enter us and taint us and turn our insides sickly?”

  “No, I don’t think so. This is nature, the Earth’s recycling. That’s all.”

  “Yes, Smart Camel.”

  “The wind that bowed our sails is abating.”

  “Yes, Camel.”

  “Did you ever see Little Big Man, Lorax?”

  “A movie?”

  “Yes, a wonderful movie from a wonderful book.”

  “No, Camel.”

  “I guess there will not be a time for us to watch it together.” He had lost the thread of why he was asking about Little Big Man.

  “Who can say, Camel?”

  “True. Now who is wise, my Sweet?”

  “Am I, Camel? I am. I am smarter for having known you. And richer. I paint now.”
r />   “Yes, you do. You paint beautiful things.”

  “Thank you, Camel.”

  “Lorax?”

  “Yes, My Parasail.”

  “I didn’t know death would be so loud. It’s deafening.”

  “Yes, Camel.”

  “Here we go,” Camel said.

  And Camel opened his eyes wide, for the last time.

  Lorax put her hand to Camel’s cheek. It was as warm as Summer. Then she undressed his beautiful body, gently removing all clothing and folding it neatly and putting it on a chair. She looked around the room one more time and smiled at the space that had become hers and she its. She wanted to remember every bit, which was made difficult by the profusion.

  Then Lorax climbed onto the bed made catafalque. She positioned her body over Camel’s like a winding sheet, belly to belly, arms to arms, legs to legs. And as Camel’s soul lifted upward, all 21 grams of it, it passed through Lorax and Lorax evanesced like dew. She was never seen again.

  She was never seen again. Eric, after Camel’s funeral, made a concerted effort to find the fey lover of the dead poet, but no one knew what had happened to her. One day she arrived and one day she was gone. There was a woman at Camel’s funeral, someone named Carla Binnage, someone Eric was sure he was supposed to remember. Carla smiled at Eric. Was it a smile that said, I know something you need to know? Or was it just that recognition thing—yet another fan or critic who knew Eric only from his work?

  Camel’s house became a shrine of sorts. The garden continued to feed many souls though no one tended it and the house, especially on warm summer evenings, when the cockshut came later and later, was alive with ghosts, if you can accept that awkward wording. Often music was heard coming from it. Some said it was Déjà Vu. Some said it was a simple dulcimer tune, “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” perhaps.

  And when they removed Lorax’s large canvases from the house and moved them to David Lusk Gallery, some said they shimmered and changed like a flickering TV reception. Some say those pictures, to this day, continue to change, to roll, to mutate. The gallery won’t sell them, though they have been offered the riches of kings.

  79.

  Dan Yumont didn’t care who was helming the picture. He worked well with almost everyone. His talent was rich and deep and he could call it up at any time, for anyone. When he met with Sandy he was all professionalism and passion. Of course he would finish the picture with her. Of course she could do it, he reassured her, though she wasn’t seeking reassurance.

  She was, however, thinking about Dan’s sex scenes, how good he looked for his age, how strong he looked—his body a burnished nut-brown—and how dedicated he was to the craft. She also thought about his magnificent penis. And she began to craft another sex scene in her head . . . .she began to form it as if from clay. How fast it took shape, how right it was for the end of the movie. She could see it all whole. And, perhaps wrongly—who can say?—she began to lay it out for Dan right there in the office.

  “I’m just now shaping this,” Sandy told Dan.

  “Mm,” Dan said.

  “I’m just now seeing it whole, large as life, you know?”

  “I do,” Dan said.

  “It’s growing in my mind, in my hand . . .” Sandy said.

  As a rule, Dan lived by no rules, as far as his infamous concupiscence was concerned. He did, however, very rarely fuck his director or producer, though there had been many opportunities. This time Dan felt it was meet and right. He felt that it was the least he could do for his fledgling megger.

  Sandy locked the door to the office.

  “On the couch, of course,” she said.

  “Of course,” Dan said.

  80.

  After Eric was fired from Memphis Movie he thought he would leave Memphis immediately and for good. But he could not. For one thing, at about the same time he was being told he was axed, a message arrived that Camel Eros had died. He had to stick around at least long enough to see his old pal buried, if they were going to bury him instead of burn him upon a pyre like the old Indian in Little Big Man. What made me think that? Eric wondered briefly.

  Also, there was Mimsy Borogoves. He had not been able to talk to her for days and now, now that he had been disgraced, finally and irrevocably, he needed her. He needed her wisdom and calm, which seemed to exist in her like some deep, warm spring. She was preternatural, he thought. And he needed her prescience, her ability to see tomorrow as if it were already whole and full of possibility. God, how he needed that now. Her cell phone number was out-of-order. There was no answer at her apartment. He drove by at night and there was no light from the window that he imagined was hers.

  So, he moped around inside the spacious Midtown Memphis home the movie company had rented for him. Sandy had cleared out. Eden had told him she was taking over the movie and that seemed right to Eric. He could not feel rancor toward her. He had called her immediately upon finding out.

  “So, for you, this is good,” he said.

  “Oh, Cabbage, I am sorry. For you it’s hell, I think.”

  “Yes, thanks,” Eric said.

  “What can I do for you? I almost threw this right back in Eden’s face. I want you to know that.”

  “Of course. But you didn’t. And you shouldn’t. Breaks come and they should be honored. Gifts from the gods. You deserve this.”

  “You’re a kind Cabbage.”

  “I’m not, not really. I am beaten down. I am an ex-director.”

  “You are most decidedly not. You know how these things work. Second chances, rebirths. It’s Hollywood’s special magic.”

  “Not this time. This was my last second chance. I was made to see that.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Well, whatever. For you, Sweetheart, I only wish good things. Finish this movie. It was yours anyway, made mostly of your smart and bright words.”

  “I will, Cabbage. I will finish it for you.”

  “For yourself,” Eric shot back, perhaps too sharply.

  “Yes,” Sandy said. “That too.”

  “Only one thing still rankles.”

  “Only one?”

  “Ok, not only one, but one in particular. I’d like to find out who leaked our inner secrets to that fucker Apenail. That’s what started this unfavorable denouement.”

  Sandy swallowed. “Yes,” she managed.

  “What’s the difference, right? It’s over for me. Rightly so. It was a mess from the beginning. I am a mess. I have no idea how to direct a picture.”

  There was silence, silence from Sandy, his biggest supporter, his love.

  “Eric, listen, sorry, I’ve got another call and I have to take it,” she said finally. Her distraction was like a hot knife.

  “Right,” he said, but she had already disconnected.

  So, he haunted the big house by himself, Sandy gone, Mimsy missing, his father finally, ultimately, for the last time gone gone gone.

  After a few days, after Camel’s funeral, Eric grew desperate to find Mimsy. He had to wait through a long weekend to call Linn Sitler’s office.

  “Hi, it’s Eric Warberg,” he said.

  Did he imagine a hesitation, as if the receptionist had been warned he might call?

  “Mimsy Borogoves, please,” he said, quickly.

  The woman laughed. “That’s very funny, Mr. Warberg. Um, look, Linn isn’t here.”

  “No, seriously, this is not about the movie. I don’t need Linn. I mean, tell her I love her and thank her, but, really, I need to talk to Mimsy.”

  “Is this a riff, some kind of movieland joke?”

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” Eric said. “Mimsy Borogoves. I know it’s an absurd name. But it is her name and I know she works for Linn.”

  “There’s no one here by that name,” the receptionist said. She managed to keep some sunshine in her voice, almost blotted out by a now creeping concern.

  “Mimsy,” Eric said. “There’s no Mimsy there.”

  “N-no, sorry
.”

  Eric didn’t know where to go with this. Hadn’t Mimsy told him she worked for Linn Sitler? Now Eric wasn’t sure.

  “Then lemme talk to Linn, I guess.”

  “She—she’s busy, I’m afraid. She’s had Spike Lee on the phone all morning. Can you imagine? We think he’s gonna do a film about Dr. King.”

  Eric could imagine. He could imagine anything about the movies. Their capacity to conjure magic was unchecked and boundless. What he could not imagine was why they were hiding Mimsy Borogoves from him. He hung up.

  To whom could he turn to find Mimsy? Who knew her? Who saw them together?

  This last construction gave him great pause. Who saw them together? Wait. He was not honestly thinking that she was a child of snow, a fever-dream? He knew her, her creamy skin, her pale eyes, her laugh. Her laugh was a thing of rare production. Her laugh could turn him inside out.

  He went to her apartment building. He went to her floor and knocked on the door. He pounded on the door. He found the super of the building.

  “Hi, sorry,” Eric said, hustling over to the busy man. “I needed to find Mimsy, Mimsy Borogoves. She lives in 738.”

  The man looked him up and down. He recognized a non-Memphian, Eric was sure. The clothes were a giveaway.

  “No one in 738. Haven’t rented it in a year.”

  “W-why?” Eric said. It wasn’t really what he wanted to ask.

  “Accident in there. Still a mess.”

  “What kind of accident?” Eric said.

  The man now was growing suspicious. He shook his head and tried to move away.

  “Wait, please,” Eric said, grabbing the man’s arm. “When—when was the accident?”

  “Year ago, I think.” he said. He looked at Eric’s hand on his arm and Eric removed it. “Gotta get back to work now, Pal. No one in there, ok?”

  “Ok,” Eric said, weakly.

  Eric called numerous people from the movie. Jimbo Cole—his old running buddy, the ludicrous Jimbo Cole—wouldn’t take his call. He found a number in his book in a woman’s handwriting for someone named Bandy Lyle Most. This Bandy Lyle Most informed Eric that he had just gotten a deal with Dreamworks for his first film and didn’t really have time to talk.