William Blatty - The Exorcist

"Oh, rubbish. Death's a comfort," Dennings sniffed.

"Not for me it isn't, Charlie."

'Well, you live through your children."

"Oh, come off it! My children aren't me."

"Yes, thank heaven. One's entirely enough."

"I mean, think about it, Burke! Not existing---forever! It's---"

"Oh, for heaven sakes! Show your bum at the faculty tea next week and perhaps those priests can give you comfort!"

He banged down his glass. "Let's another."

"You know, I didn't know they drank?"

"Well, you're stupid."

His eyes had grown mean. Was he reaching the point of no return? Chris wondered. She had the feeling she had touched a nerve. Had she?

"Do they go to confession?" she asked him.

"How would I know!" he suddenly bellowed.

"Well, weren't you studying to be a---"

"Where's the bloody drink!"

"Want some coffee?"

"Don't be fatuous. I want another drink."

"Have some coffee."

"Come along, now. One for the road."

"The Lincoln Highway?"

"That's ugly, and I loathe an ugly drunk. Come along, dammit, fill it!"

He shoved his glass across the bar and she poured more gin.

"I guess maybe I should ask a couple of them over," Chris murmured.

"Ask who?"

"Well, whoever." She shrugged. 'The big wheels; you know, priests."

"They'll never leave; there fucking plunderers," he rasped, and gulped his gin.

Yeah, he's starting to blow, thought Chris and quickly changed the subject: she explained about the script and her chance to direct.

"Oh, good," Dennings muttered.

"It scares me."

"Oh, twaddle. My baby, the difficult thing about directing is making it seem as if the damned thing were difficult. I hadn't a clue my first time out, but here I am, you see. It's child's play."

"Burke, to be honest with you, now that they've offered me my chance, I'm really not sure I could direct my grandmother across the street. I mean, all of that technical stuff."

"Come along; leave all that to the editor, the cameraman and the script girl, darling. Get good ones and they’ll see you through. What's important is handling the cast, and, you'd be marvelous, just marvelous at that. You could not only tell them how to move and read a line, my baby, you could show them. Just remember Paul Newman and Rachel, Rachel and don't be so hysterical."

She still looked doubtful. "Well, about this technical stuff," she worried. Drunk or sober, Dennings was the best director in the business. She wanted his advice.

"For instance," he asked her.

For almost an hour she probed to the barricades of minutiae. The data were easily found in tests, but reading tended to fray her patience. Instead; she read people. Naturally inquisitive, she juiced them; wrung them out. But books were unwringable. Books were glib. They said "therefore" and "clearly" when it wasn't clear at all, and their circumlocutions could never be challenged. They could never be stopped for a shrewdly disarming, "Hold it, I'm dumb. Could I have that again?"

They could never be pinned; made to wriggle; dissected. Books were like Karl.

"Darling, all you really need is a brilliant cutter," the director cackled, rounding it off. "I mean someone who really knows his doors."

He'd grown charming and bubbly, and seemed to have passed the threatened danger pointy.

"Beg pardon, madam. You wish something?"

Karl stood attentively at the door to the study.

"Oh, hullo, Thorndike," Dennings giggled. "Or is it Heinrich? I can't keep it straight."

"It is Karl."

"Yes, of course it is. Damn. I'd forgotten. Tell me, Karl, was it public relations you told me you did for the Gestapo, or was it community relations? I believe there's a difference."

Karl spoke politely. "Neither one, sir. I am Swiss."

"Oh, yes, of course." The director guffawed. "And you never went bowling with Goebbels, I suppose."

Karl, impervious, turned to Chris.

"And never went flying with Rudolph Hess!"

"Madam wishes?"

"Oh, l don't know. Burke, you want coffee?"

"Fuck it!"

The director stood up abruptly and strode belligerently from the room and the house.

Chris shook her head, and then turned to Karl. "Unplug the phones," she ordered expressionlessly.

"Yes, madam. Anything else?"

"Oh, maybe some Sanka. Where's Rags?"

"Down in playroom. I call her?"

"Yeah, it's bedtime. Oh, no, wait a second, Karl. Never mind. I'd better go see the bird. Just get me the Sanka, please."

"Yes, madam."

"And for the umpty-eighth time, I apologize for Burke."

"I pay no attention."

"I know. That's what bugs him."

Chris walked to the entry hall of the house, pulled open the door to the basement staircase and started downstairs.

"Hi ya, stinky, whatchya doin' down there? Got the bird?"

"Oh, yes, come see! Come on down, it's all finished!"

The playroom was paneled and brightly decorated. Easels. Paintings. Phonograph. Tables for games and a table for sculpting. Red and white bunting left over from a party for the previous tenant's teenaged son.

"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed Chris as her daughter handed her the figure. It was not quite dry and looked something like a "worry bird," painted orange, except for the beak, which was laterally striped in green and white. A tuft of feathers was glued to the head.

"Do you like it?" asked Regan.

"Oh, honey, I do, I really. do. Got a name for it?"

"Uh-uh."

"What's a good one?"

"I dunno," Regan shrugged.

"Let me see, let me see." Chris tapped fingertips to teeth. "I don't know. Whaddya think? Whaddya think about 'Dumbbird'? Huh? just 'Dumbbird.' "

Regan was snickering, hand to her mouth to conceal the braces. Nodding.

" 'Dumbbird' by a landslide! I'll leave it here to dry and then I'll put him in my room."

Chris was setting flown the bird when she noticed the Ouija board. Close. On the table. She'd forgotten she had it. Almost as curious about herself as she was about others, she'd originally bought it as a possible means of exposing clues to her subconscious. It hadn't worked. She'd used it a time or two with Sharon, and once with Dennings, who had skillfully steered the plastic planchette ("Are you the one who's moving it, ducky?") so that all of the "messages" were obscene, and then afterward blamed it on the "fucking spirits!"

"You playin' with the Ouija board?"

"Yep."

"You know how?"

"Oh, well, sure. Here, I'll show you." She was moving to sit by the board.

"Well, I think you need two people, honey."

"No ya don't, Mom; I do it all the time."

Chris was pulling up a chair. "Well, let's both play, okay"

Hesitation. "Well, okay." She had her fingertips positioned on the white planchette and as Chris reached out to position hers, the planchette made a swift, sudden move to the position on the board marked No.

Chris smiled at her slyly. "Mother, I'd rather do it myself? Is that it? You don't want me to play?"

"No, I do! Captain Howdy said 'no.' "

"Captain who?"

"Captain Howdy."

"Honey, who's Captain Howdy?"

"Oh, ya know. I make questions and he does the answers."

"Oh?"

"Oh, he's nice."

Chris tried not to frown as she felt a dim and sudden concern. The child had loved her father deeply, yet never had reacted visibly to her parents' divorce. And Chris didn't like it. Maybe she cried in her room; she didn't know. But Chris was fearful she was repressing and that her emotions might one day erupt in some harmful form. A fantasy playmate. It didn't sound healthy. Why "Howdy"? For Howard? Her father? Pretty close.

"So how come you couldn't even come up with a name for a dum-dum bird, and then you hit me with something like 'Captain Howdy'? Why do you call him 'Captain Howdy'?"