Rudolph Wurlitzer - Slow Fade

“Let’s head for Nevada,” Walker said. “We have a few thousand to play with. Maybe we’ll get lucky and walk away from movieland.”

“No way,” A.D. said with sudden vehemence. “The only way you’re going to walk away from movieland is when we complete the deal.”

“Let’s just get to Nevada,” Walker repeated, hobbling for the door.

In three hours they had crossed through the shimmering white hallucinations of the Great Salt Lake Desert and pulled into the parking lot of the Red Garter Casino, a few hundred yards across the state line. After they had checked into a room, they went directly to the tables. They played steadily and morosely, oblivious of time, occasionally passing each other without expression as they changed tables or took a break in the brightly lit twenty-four-hour luncheonette. Once Walker stepped outside to smell the cool desert air. It was night and above him a hundred-and-fifty-foot red, white, and blue cowboy pointed a finger toward the action, signaling “This Is the Place” to a convoy of four Mack trucks groaning in from the desert. The parking lot was alive with cowboys and Indians and Winnebagos from every state. Walker felt an urge to join a herd of tourists filing into a Greyhound bus after an hour’s pit stop in front of the slot machines. He had enough money. He could get off after a few hundred miles, maybe in Oregon. Rent a little house, phone it in to the old man simple and straight, just the facts about Clem. But of course he went back inside. He lost steadily and when he was down to his last two hundred dollars he went back to the room and tried to sleep.

A.D., on the other hand, was on a roll. He had moved around the room, stopping here and there, shooting a little craps, dropping a hundred, winning two, not doing anything at roulette, breaking even at blackjack. Then he got reckless and bored at roulette and hit a couple of straight numbers and he was a grand up. He changed from five- to twenty-five- to fifty-dollar chips and kept on playing. He lost and then he won and won again, big, twenty one-hundred-dollar chips on number twenty-three. It was as if the hand of God had reached down and dropped a gold chip on his lap. He was up fourteen grand. He decided to keep four for himself and give the rest to Walker as payment for the next installment of the script, making himself the producer. He would have Walker sign a paper saying all three of them owned the script equally. This was his move. He would have half a script credit along with the producer’s credit, and if Wesley pulled out they could take it to a younger director more able to deal with action. Because if there was one thing A.D. felt the script needed it was action. Or another character. If there was another person along, another girl perhaps, a friend of Lacey’s that Jim could fall in love with, then sex would be better and more complicated and there would be more angles. Later he would deal with all of that. For now he would just shine it on.

He cashed in his chips, except for a hundred dollars’ worth of ones, and put Walker’s ten grand into a separate pocket in a sealed envelope. Then he went over to the blackjack table and spent the next several hours neither winning nor losing.

Meanwhile, Walker, who hadn’t been able to sleep, was trying to wear himself out by returning to the script. He had been working off and on, occasionally watching the action in the casino for a few minutes, but mostly hanging around the desk while the scene built up inside him and he felt himself pulled back to that long traumatic journey by train up the length of India to New Delhi. It was the smoky evening light in the Madras train station that he remembered first and then the babble of thousands of voices. .

EXTERIOR — MIDDAY. . Coming in over the scene with a crane shot of Jim and Lacey following two porters bent double under twelve pieces of luggage as they make their way through a chaos of travelers, beggars, and food vendors. The exotic anarchy of the scene has drawn them closer together. They certainly look more cooled out than they did a few days ago, wearing white cotton kurtas that hang loosely over their waists and newly bought leather sandals. As the porters place their luggage in their first-class compartment, Jim whispers to Lacey in a broad imitation of an Indian accent, “It doesn’t matter if all of India is outside wanting to come in. I mean, does it now? We are inside and being inside is all that matters when one experiences the outside in such an aggressive worldly manner. I don’t know if that is properly philosophical, young lady, but I’m very much fatigued, not just physically, but in my own spiritual body as well and as we know, weariness admits to its own demands.”. . This while sliding a hand under her flowing kurta. . the porters have laid out their bedrolls, accepted a tip, and left. The train picks up speed as it pulls out of the station. Through the window scenes of rural India: endlessly parched fields, smoke from a thousand cooking fires, cardboard and tin shacks outside of ancient mud villages where oxen push waterwheels and hollow-eyed children stare blankly at the passing train. .

THESE SCENES INTERCUT. . with Jim and Lacey cozy and intimate inside their protective cocoon, playing cassettes on their tape deck, drinking wine and eating sandwiches from a straw basket the hotel provided, making love. . Within the rhythm of the montage night arrives, then the first streaks of morning light across the flat dusty landscape. . The train stops at the crowded station of a small city. It’s hot. They have an hour’s wait and decide to stretch their legs on the platform outside where entire families live and sleep in the midst of the usual food vendors and comings and goings. .

ANOTHER ANGLE. . From inside a nearly empty restaurant an American couple, whom we know by their adopted Indian names of Sita and Bodhi, sip tea and silently watch Jim and Lacey as they stroll down the platform. They have been on the trail for a very long time and look utterly wasted in their torn and grease-stained lungis and kurtas, faded prayer beads made of tulsi wood draped around their necks, their jaundiced faces sunken and empty-eyed. As Jim and Lacey reach the end of the platform and turn back toward the train, three lepers appear like apparitions from a grotesque dream, waving their open sores as they ask for alms. An old woman with half her nose missing tries to rub a hideous dripping arm across Lacey’s shoulder. Lacey screams. Reaching into her purse, she throws a handful of bills at the lepers, who crawl on their hands and knees after more money than they’ve ever seen. . As they make their way back to the train, Bodhi steps outside the restaurant and intercepts them. He is a dark-haired young man with a long matted beard and small oval eyes that seem too slow and controlled. “Those were lepers,” he says to Lacey. “You’ll have to get rid of your shirt.” Lacey, on the edge of hysteria, starts to cry but Bodhi puts his hand gently on her arm. “Don’t worry. Happens all the time. Come on in and have a cup of tea.”. . Numbly they follow him inside, sitting down next to Sita, who is blond and perilously thin. “Put this on,” she says to Lacey, taking a wadded-up orange kurta out of her handbag and handing it to her. . “They never actually touched me,” Lacey says. . “I know what I’m talking about,” Sita says, her pale blue eyes insistent. . Obediently Lacey changes into the torn and soiled kurta that makes her look as freaked as she feels. “I have been inside that rag a long long time,” Sita says softly. “It carries my vibrations, and if you open up to them you’ll relax.” Lacey nods, not wanting to pursue it any further. On the platform in front of them an old man in a dhoti starts to play a srangi (Indian violin). He is blind, and is helped by a young girl, who sings along in a high tender voice. A few people drop coins in front of him. . “Going north, are you?” Bodhi asks. . “New Delhi,” Jim answers and then Bodhi gets right to it. “Listen, brother, can you spare enough change for two poor pilgrims to get on the train? We’re going up to Rishikesh and we sort of lost it. I picked up malaria in Cochin and both of us went through the hepatitis trip. Any way you cut it, we’re busted.”. . Jim offers him a wad of rupees. With great deliberation, Bodhi counts out what is needed and hands the rest to him. “Blessings on you for a pure and compassionate act.” He calls out for two orders of dumplings and kurds, then turns to stare at a young boy in a white Rolling Stones T-shirt trying to hustle a pack of Camels. “Hold on. Just wait right there. I see an old friend.” He turns to Jim. “If you can front me three hundred more rups I can absolutely guarantee you a serene and expansive ride all the way up to the city of your choice, Nue-va Del-hi.”. . Jim hands him the rupees and he walks quickly outside where he and the boy begin a transaction, obviously not for cigarettes. . Sita sighs. “He was beautiful in Mysore. He was very open, like a baby when we saw the Puri Baba. He cried and kissed his feet. It was a holy moment.” She stares off across the tracks as they sit in the hot oppressive silence waiting for the train. .