Rudolph Wurlitzer - Slow Fade

Wesley fumbled through his jacket pocket for a cigarette. “Not India, not Mexico, not L.A. ever again. In fact, why don’t you use the house on Mulholland and take a break from all this Shangri-La stuff? You’re as stuck in your fun as I am.”

For the first time Sam looked at his friend with real concern. “I might do that. But you’ll need a foxhole. You can’t just hang out at resorts and film festivals.”

“I still have my father’s place. Or at least I think I do. Off the coast of Labrador.”

“What about Evelyn?”

“I don’t know about Evelyn these days,” Wesley said. “But I would hope she’d come with me. She’s from up there. The north anyway.”

Sam started to leave, then turned back toward Wesley and said: “I say fuck ’em all; your kids, your wife, whatever’s left of your career, even your friends. You want to leave, go ahead. You want to pull the plug on yourself, do yourself in, that’s okay. Take what you have left to do and do it. No one cares anyway.”

Then he continued down the path and Wesley went inside.

Closing the door, Wesley moved toward the distant sound of the Beach Boys singing “Good Vibrations.” He stopped at the end of the entrada , looking at the blue tiles on the floor of the clean white living room and through the open glass doors to the wooden deck, where Evelyn lay naked on a towel. A thin bearded man, also naked, was slowly rubbing suntan oil onto her back. He had shut his eyes as if willing all his energy to the ends of his fingers. There was something about the harsh light bouncing off the white walls and Evelyn lying so boldly on her stomach with her thighs slightly parted that reminded Wesley of another scene. Perhaps it was Godard’s Contempt , with Brigitte Bardot stretched out on a stone parapet, her body silhouetted against the warm blue of the Mediterranean. Or was it an image from one of his own films of a floating daydream? Fritz Lang, at the end of his life, had played himself in Godard’s film; an old director, burdened with too much cynical wisdom, trying to promote one last project. Other directors had turned an occasional trick, John Huston had acted, as had Von Stroheim and Welles and Nick Ray. But their performances embarrassed him because he could never do it.

He watched the hand on Evelyn’s back work its way upward, pausing briefly on top of her head before wandering gently toward the cheeks of her ass. Resting there, a middle finger slid slowly down and probed deeper. As Evelyn shifted her rump to welcome the invasion, Wesley walked forward and the bearded man raised his head, his eyes a startling blue. Wesley moved slowly, giving the man time to stand up, while Evelyn, sneaking a look beneath her arm, preferred to remain as she was.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hardin,” the man said, reaching for his bathing trunks. He had a soft pouting face and curly blond hair; Wesley marked him for an actor or beach hustler.

Wesley stepped up to him, eyes narrowed. “It’s like Texas down here in the sense that no one cares much if a man kills another man for porking around with his wife.”

The man tried hard to be charming: “I am French and unaware of such rules.”

Wesley slapped him on the side of the head with an open palm.

He hadn’t hit a man in forty years and the sudden violence shocked him. The Frenchman seemed more embarrassed than hurt, even somewhat concerned, as if Wesley had made himself vulnerable to a stroke.

He stepped backwards, watching Wesley. “It was a small hedonistic interlude, Mr. Hardin, nothing more.”

“I’m sure,” Wesley said and turned to face the sea.

“He didn’t mean anything serious,” Evelyn said after the man had left. “He works in the French consulate in Mexico City and comes down here to fish.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Wesley said. “I was reacting to something else.”

Evelyn sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees while Wesley took off his shirt and sat down next to her on an aluminum beach chair. His skin was shockingly pale next to hers, hanging loose and old from his ribs, never to be firm again.

“I might go to New York,” he said, looking out over the railing toward the parallel line of the horizon. “There’s private financing available for the Indian film, at least according to my agent. Perhaps you want to stay here or go on a trip. Maybe Yucatán or Guatemala. You haven’t seen any of the Aztec stuff. “

“You don’t want me with you,” she said flatly.

He avoided her eyes and she stood up and walked over to the edge of the deck. Then she bent down and picked up the tape deck where the Beach Boys were singing “Fun, fun, fun ’til her daddy takes the T-bird away!” and hurled it over the cliff where it shattered on the rocks below. When she turned to face him, her eyes were openly angry. He had never seen her lose control this way and he watched her closely, grateful for the small rush of anxiety that had awakened inside him, for the hint, however slight, that the wall surrounding his heart might have a few expanding cracks in it.

“I don’t want you involved in my internal melodramas,” he said, trying to provoke her even more.

But she didn’t back down. “You use dead or alive like a club. Maybe there’s something simple that you’ve forgotten.”

“Are you telling me to shit or get off the pot?”

“I’m telling you that when you married me you didn’t know whether you could go on. That’s what you said then; that you had had this heart attack, that you were burned out and had outlived yourself. I thought you took me with you because you knew I would help you when your time came.”

She watched him now, because she had never talked to him like this. She expected him to turn away and he did, but then he turned back to her, his eyes strangely moist and alive.

“What was in the deal for you when you took up with me?” he asked.

“I would have taken any deal to get out of Labrador, not that you’re just any deal. I was thirty and I thought I was in my slot forever. The most I could hope for was a trip to St. John’s or Labrador City. I never told you I was going to marry someone else. Way before you found me. When you asked me to go with you I had to go. He understood, but if he had run into you he would have killed you. You know how those boys from Goose Bay are.”

“Do you have regrets?” he asked.

“Not too many, most of the time. He married someone else and went to Sudbury to work in the mines. I thought I loved him. That’s something else I learned I don’t know anything about.”

“Would you come to Labrador with me?”

“Probably.”

“Because you owe me?”

“I suppose.”

He sighed. His legs hurt and his feet were cold and he was very tired. Evelyn leaned over and rested her head on his lap.

“Did you read Walker’s script?” he asked.

“Yes, and then I gave it to Sam and he read it. He says Walker’s off the deep end and you’re crazy to indulge him.”

“What do you think?”

“I’d like to know what comes next.”

He shut his eyes, but before he could fall asleep she had helped him into the bedroom. Lying naked on the bed, he felt her lips wander softly over his weary and aching body and then her fingers massaged the soles of his feet until he slept. She lay beside him for a long time before she dressed and took a taxi into town, where she spent the afternoon shopping for a new tape deck and finishing what she had begun with the Frenchman from Mexico City.

AFTER A.D. had dressed Walker’s wound and they had gotten stoned enough to sleep for a few hours, they drove down off the high mountain plateau in the early morning light and headed north toward Salt Lake City, where they stopped at a Holiday Inn on the outside of town. A.D. ordered a few drinks from room service and checked Walker’s wound again, bathing and hovering over him like an anxious nurse, so much so that Walker finally yelled that he wanted to sleep. A.D. sighed, tucking him in once more before he went outside for a walk alongside the state highway that shot like a smoky arrow into the heart of the city. He was filled with terror that he might have been trying to kill Walker. He had always managed to abuse or self-destruct his own ambitions as if a stubborn force inside him was determined not to let him ever switch tracks or hustle a new deal. Walking around the front of a newly built supermarket, he knelt down on the asphalt behind several produce trucks and vowed then and there not to blow this opportunity or betray himself, no matter what. When he returned to the motel Walker was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed fully dressed.