‘Pardon?’
‘Yes he’s saved also, dear,’ intervened Fielding, and I said, ‘Yeah. Me too.’
‘I’m glad. Spunk’s at the end of the hall.’
She led us past a series of dun-walled anterooms through whose windows the burnished leagues of the East River fired off all their flame. I saw a pool-table, a polythene-wrapped three-piece suite, various devotional ornaments and gewgaws with their special pale glow. That glow I didn’t need. We entered a dining-room as dark as a cinema with a glistening figure at the head of the long table. Mrs Davis slipped back into the light. It was five o’clock.
‘Two years ago,’ the actor continued. ‘You auditioned me.’ He laughed disgustedly. ‘For a commercial.’
‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘I really don’t remember.’ His voice — he had a certain valve or muscle working on it. I recognized that strain. I talked the same way at his age, fighting my rogue aitches and glottal stops. Glottal itself I delivered in only one syllable, with a kind of gulp or gag half way through. Spunk here was trying to tame his bronco word-endings and his slippery vowels. I speak all right now, though. But I tell you, it’s a tiring ten-year haul.
‘I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough. For your commercial.’
‘No kidding,’ I said. ‘You remember what commercial it was?’
‘No, I don’t remember. Put it out!’
He meant my cigarette. ‘Where?’
Tut it out!’
‘Jesus,’ I said, and appealed to Fielding. This is just a dramatized Hangover, I thought. I dragged mightily and in the mauve gleam I could see Davis more clearly, the bunched muscles in their tanktop. His head had an odd tilt or cock to it, set on the shoulders as if he were looking up from the bars of a drop-handled bike. He was smiling.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Smoke. Since the word got out on Prehistoric I’ve seen a whole bunch of scripts. Road movies, good-ole-boy stuff, get the girl, happy ending.’ He shook his head. ‘Now I’m interested. I’m interested in Good Money. But let’s get some things straight. What’s your attitude to this Doug character?’
‘Uh, largely sympathetic.’
‘He’s a degenerate.’
‘He’s got problems you wouldn’t believe.’
‘Listen. I won’t smoke and I won’t drink and I won’t have sex.’
‘In the film.’
‘In the film.’
Well that’s that, I thought. But then I thought on a while and raised my finger. ‘Will you have hangovers?’
‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘I am an actor.’
‘Wait a minute. You had sex in Prehistoric.’
‘That was a primitive man, Self. Something else worries me. The fight. Tell me something, all right? Why would I want to fight with an old man?’
I noticed that Fielding was also staring expectantly at me. This will be over soon. Like everything else, this is getting nearer to being over.
‘It’s kind of the climax,’ I said. ‘You and Lorne, you’re fighting over the girl. Also the money. It —’
‘Yeah yeah. But you don’t fight with old men. Not like that. Not with fists.’
‘How about if you lost the fight? How about that? Or what if you hit him on the head with a car-tool?’
He looked at me pityingly, a full flat mouth on a chunky chin. ‘It wouldn’t ever happen,’ he said. ‘I’d take him out some other way. There are other techniques … hypnosis, mindpower. Anyhow this we can fix. Herrick tells me you have a first draft two weeks away from completion. You’ll come here and we’ll talk again. My mother will see you out.’
Half way to the door I swivelled and, as if simply following the script of this particular hangover, strolled back to the table and came to a halt with my hands in my pockets a few feet from Davis’s chair. He looked up at me. Yes, even his face was muscular, as though he pumped iron with his ears. I said, ‘We’ll meet one day.’
‘Uh?’
‘Room 101.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Forget it. You know, I really liked your film. It said something to me. I’ll be seeing you, Spunk.’
——————
We stood in the hot sandy bucket of the street, watching First Avenue’s wall of death. The road rises sharply here as the tunnel fans out and climbs back into the air. Now the cars thumped and bucked on the ramp, the uptown stampede from the traps of the underpass. Fielding had waved away the Autocrat, and we idled, considering, the producer in his dove-grey suit, the director in boxy charcoal and troubled flesh. You know, the minute we got in there, the studs in my back had started to tickle, to rustle hatefully. Maybe it would be smart to let a medic in on this — there might be dirt in those wounds. Or maybe I could guts it out with penicillin, from my personal supply. In California, how much are backs? A night spent gummed to the plane’s polyester would give me the full story either way. Home. Go home.