Zelda’s — Dinner and Hostess Dancing. Inside was the message, the hand forward-sloping, tremulous, not unlike my own. Here in the States, in my day, writing lessons began with you tipping your pad forty-five degrees to the left, in order to promote this wavy, tumbling style. ‘Frankie and Johnny were lovers’, sealed with a kiss, a full lip-print in sweetest pink.
All in all, I’m none too clear what this guy means by motivation.
——————
The new televisual intercom on the steel desk gave off its throttled bleep. Fielding pressed the button and waited for the picture to form. He looked mildly startled.
‘Who’s this?’ I asked him.
‘That’s fine, Dorothea. Thank you. No, you just wait for our call.’ Fielding sat down and said, ‘Nub Forkner.’
‘Good,’ I said. With Spunk Davis going AWOL, with Spunk sulking and failing to return our calls, Fielding and I had decided to check out Nub Forkner as a possible reserve. I made a note of the name on my pad, for something to do.
‘That’s o-r-k, Slick,’ said Fielding.
I glanced down at the page. ‘That’s what I’ve got.’
‘… You read much, John?’
‘Read what?’
‘Fiction.’
‘Do you?’
‘Oh sure. It gives me all kinds of ideas. I like the sound and the fury,’ he added enigmatically.
That’s what reading does to you: you start saying things like that. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘well I’ve been reading a novel by George Orwell. Animal Farm. Re-reading it, actually. Yeah and 1984 too.’ Me and 1984 were getting along just fine.
‘Animal Farm?’ said Fielding. ‘No kidding.’
Dorothea or whoever waved goodbye and clicked off to the far doorway buttoning up her shirt. We saw her shrink back momentarily before hurrying out into the hall. Nub Forkner ducked slowly through the entrance and paused with a sigh to re-amass his weight … Now I was far from familiar with Nub’s work. True, I had dozed and belched my way through two films in which he featured—but at thirty thousand feet, in the refugee darkness of transatlantic airplanes. The press handout on my lap confirmed that Nub had played a Pawnee vagrant in Whisky Sour and a deaf mute in last year’s cackle-factory spectacular Down on the Funny Farm. Both the vagrant and the mute, I seemed to remember, were outsize psychotics given to sudden and indiscriminate violence — big mothers, primal-scream specialists. Well, as Nub creaked across the joists towards us, with oil-strike hair shawling his shoulders, throwback knuckles grazing the floor, Fielding and I were clearly meant to think there was something unshirkably elemental about him, his cave shave, primal jeans, noble-savage beerbelly. You didn’t need much of an eye for nutcases to tell that Nub was a real fizzer, all set to pop. He was about six five, 300 pounds. Yes, Nub looked pretty useful.
‘Hi, Nub,’ said Fielding drily. ‘Why not take a chair.’
Why not indeed? Nub took a chair and sent it twirling sideways end over end with a negligent whipcrack of his wrist. Next, he picked up Fielding’s snazzy egg-timer (used to pace the strippers) and stomped it to the floor. He bent down and extended an arm across the desk, ready to swipe it sideways over the high-tec tabletop. He looked up quickly and I saw that his face was full of expectant ingratiation.
Fielding climbed sharply to his feet. ‘Easy, Nub,’ he said.
Nub frowned and straightened. ‘This is a fury scene, right?’ he said in a deep calm voice. ‘Male rage. I’m a method actor. I got to get furious first.’
The whole thing was a farce from the start. Nub was a one-role guy, a bearded lady. He was hopeless for us. Who’d believe that Caduta Massi could have produced this room-filler? How would he contrive to lose a fight to Lorne Guyland? Could you see him in the arms of Butch Beausoleil? Forget it. Nub would just have to hang around until the next fat-whacko part came along… But we had to test him, and he had to test us. He had to come here to see if his particular brand of rogue chemicals, his particular slant or version, was good for another few bucks. I suppose we sell whatever we have. Actors are strippers: they do it all day long. Fielding gave him the usual bullshit and at last he shuddered off across the floor.