Rudolph Wurlitzer - Slow Fade

“I have my own production company now.” Ben’s tight busy smile took in Walker’s sneakers, bandaged leg, cut-off jeans, red cowboy shirt, and dark glasses, as well as the silver-tipped cane A.D. had bought him. “Three to five pictures a year, although I’ll tell you, L.A. feels like Detroit in the thirties. Nothing moving. Absolutely nothing. All they want are these thirty-million-dollar cartoons or some jerk-off soap that can’t get on without one of six stars who get two or three million guaranteed. It’s obscene. No one pays anyone and no one makes decisions. But you know all that bullshit. Tell me, Walk, what are you up to?”

“I’m writing a script.”

“It’s in your blood, that’s for sure. I’m still a big fan of your father’s, you know. I’ve heard the stories, of course.”

“He’s in Mexico.”

“Sensational,” Ben said. “He can work for me anytime. Tell him I love him and that he’s one of the real articles we have left in this rotten business. He’s a professional, not one of these amateur bimbos I seem to have to deal with all the time.” His eyes shifted to take in A.D. as he appeared by Walker’s side, looking unexpectedly sartorial in gray Giorgio Armani slacks and a black Pierre Cardin shirt with bone-white buttons. All highlighted by his black eye patch.

“My producer,” Walker said, making the introductions.

“You’re working with a first-class talent,” Ben said to A.D. “Join us in my suite and we’ll celebrate.”

Walker tried to beg off but A.D. was insistent and the Oriental woman whose name turned out to be Rosie didn’t seem to mind one way or the other, and so they took the elevator up to Ben’s suite, which was furnished with a piano, winding staircase, pink velvet couches, ceiling-to-floor columns, and a three-foot television screen.

“Now tell me about the project,” Ben said as the portly man helped him slip into a maroon smoking jacket and went off to make a round of Bloody Marys.

“It’s a love story that takes place in India,” A.D. said, planting his feet on top of a glass coffee table. “A triangle between three Americans. Wesley is obsessed with it, especially as Walker is writing it. There is a lot of intensity between these two. I went down to New Mexico while he was shooting and talked to him about it, and it turns out that he’s always been fascinated by the East. When Walker showed up having been over there, well, you know, it was a natural.”

“I love it,” Ben said. “It’s like the Fondas or John and Walter Huston going off to make The Treasure of the Sierra Madre . And of course there are all those frozen rupees in India just waiting for American investors. It makes sense, financially, creatively, emotionally. You can live like a maharaja. I did a little film once in Bali. It was never released, but it was one of the most satisfying trips in my entire life.”

“Peaches and cream,” the blond girl said. “I’d love to go on a trip like that.”

Ben patted her on the leg.

The portly man, who appeared to be some sort of assistant, went over a side table behind the TV screen and made a series of intense phone calls. The blond girl asked Rosie if she had ever heard of a certain skin lotion she was now using, and Rosie shrugged and said she didn’t think so but that she had tried a lot of different lotions and she often found herself doing things and then not really remembering them.

“Seriously,” Ben asked, “how is Wes? Everyone says he should check into the puzzle factory. I just hope it’s not his health.”

“The script has given him a second life,” A.D. said. “He can’t wait to get into the saddle again. You can’t believe the ideas he comes up with.”

“Money is hard these days,” Ben said. “Especially if you’re seventy years old and just fired off a film and your last three efforts have taken dives at the box office.”

“The man’s a legend in his own time,” A.D. insisted.

“No question about that.” Ben smiled at A.D. in a way that let him know he was under suspicion of being an amateur bimbo. “No doubt you have private financing already locked up. Hell, if Wesley pulled one off no one would applaud more than me. I trust you have a backup country if India doesn’t pan out?”

“Mexico,” A.D. said. “Or some place like that.”

“If you switch locations south of the border, come and see me. And Walker, I’m interested in the script. Especially if Wesley decides it’s time to write his memoirs. In fact, let’s get together when you get back to town. Say at the end of the week.”

Walker said he would get in touch and then asked Rosie if she was ready to leave.

“You’re welcome here,” A.D. said to her warmly.

She looked from one to the other, weighing her needs, and then stood up next to Walker, who shook hands with Ben and clapped A.D. on the shoulder, telling him how much faith he had in him as a producer. Then he and Rosie took the elevator down to his room.

Rosie kicked off her shoes and went straight to bed, sliding in between the sheets.

“Do you want me?” she asked.

“I think so,” Walker said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

She stared up at him with her hard weary eyes. “I might nod out on you if you don’t get it on soon. I’ve been working too hard. I need a vacation.”

“I haven’t made it with anyone for a few years,” he confessed.

“You must be a fag. Not that it makes any difference. I’m good with fags as long as they don’t get too emotionally weird on me.”

“It’s not that. My wife died and I never got to it again.”

“I’m the opposite,” she said. “When someone dies on me, I can’t get enough.”

“I guess I’ve been shut down,” he said.

“For two hundred dollars I’ll take care of your fear for the rest of the day. I can’t promise the night.”

As he took off his clothes she noticed the bandage over his leg. “My producer shot me when I tried to run away,” he explained.

“Film scum,” she said, as if she knew what she was talking about.

He lay down on the bed but refrained from touching her. Staring at the ceiling, he said: “There’s a line in The African Queen when Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn are floating down this river and he says to her: ‘Pinch me, Rosie. Here we are, going down the river like Anthony and Cleopatra.’ ”

“Do you feel we’re floating down a river?” she asked as her fingers reached over and caressed his cock.

“In a way.”

“Then why don’t you slide inside me so that you can get with the current.”

Turning her over on her side, he entered into her. Holding her breasts and shutting his eyes, he remained very still, breathing evenly and smelling the faint perfume in her hair. When she finally responded, sighing and moving her hips, he stopped her, his hand pressing down on her thigh. They remained that way for several minutes, not moving, his breathing matching hers. His mind empty, he felt his blood roaring through him and a delicious agony invading his entire body. He passed through that and entered a quiet place, a calm that was soon replaced by fear as she started to move again and he felt he was going to explode, but she pulled herself in and the pressure in his throat and ears receded as she lay perfectly still. He had no idea who she was and in fact had no memory of her, even the color of her hair. She might have been asleep except that she was saying, “You’re on the money, honey. Hold it right there.” He held it right there while a great shaking sadness stole into him that began in his feet and swept up into his loins, and on the crest of that terrifying emptiness, he came.

Rosie immediately fell asleep while Walker lay awake and thought of his wife for the first time since her death and the last time they had made love when she had been so freaked and lustful lying underneath him on the sandy soil somewhere in the middle of the scorched plains of India. Some clinging residue of the smell and taste of her enveloped him for a moment, and to stop thinking about her, he went over to the desk and began to write.