Straight Cut (6 page)

There were errands enough to fill a couple of hours. I went to the bank in Chinatown and stood in a line to cash Kevin’s check. The computers didn’t go down when the teller put it through, which I took as a good sign. I stood in another line to buy traveler’s checks for the trip, more of these than I thought I would really need, but then you never know.

After the bank I walked across East Broadway and bought a carton of orange juice and a couple of beef buns. Then I went over to Columbus Park to sit down and eat. Hadn’t had a beef bun in many months, and I’ve always liked the little park. Today the weather was pleasant, sunny but not yet hot, with a light breeze waving the trees and dappling the light on the paving stones. The clientele today was quiet and sedate: some elderly Chinese, a couple of winos stroked out on the benches, and me, eating my beef buns, drinking my juice. Down in the south end of the park three Chinese boys were passing the time by throwing
shuriken
at a wooden door. In the concrete shelter behind me someone had erected a tent and appeared to be living in it.

I wadded up the bakery bag and lit a cigarette. A small white butterfly came and fluttered over the pavement in front of my feet. I pulled
Either Or
from the side pocket of my bag, not to read it really but to flip through the “Diapsalmata,” which is comparatively easy going.

Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace; they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God.

Thok.
A pair of
shuriken
struck a tree several yards to my left. The boys had come up higher in the park. Someone sitting close to the tree remonstrated with them in Chinese. I could see the star-shaped
shuriken
embedded in the tree bark to half the length of their razor points. One of the boys retrieved them and the group moved down the way again. No threat. I looked back into the book.

… half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never sleep when I dream, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.

This had the unlooked-for effect of making me remember my own dream and I got up and walked out of the park in hopes of getting away from it. I was going south and angling toward Broadway. But to the rhythm of my feet I was hearing the dreary little singsong which begins a few pages later.

If you marry you will regret it; if you do not marry you will also regret it… . [repeat]

Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will also regret that. [repeat, repeat]

Several alternatives are suggested in the original score, and almost anything will fit. I arrived on Broadway and continued downtown. At length I came upon an international bank and went into it to exchange some traveler’s checks for lire. The noise of the bank muffled the either/or jingle in my mind, and mercifully I had forgotten it by the time I got back on the street. Not far from the bank there was a big chain bookstore and I went in and spent as long as I could manage selecting a new Italian phrase book and dictionary. My old ones had been lost or possibly discarded at some point when I had felt it necessary to lighten my luggage.

Go to Rome, you will regret it …

I paid for the books and walked up to Fulton Street. Nothing more to be done, but there was a McAnn’s down the block to the east. I went in and sat down at the bar. If I’d ever been in this particular one before I didn’t recall it but all of them are much the same: long, dark, and narrow, with moldy paper shamrocks on the walls, thick-brogued bartenders, and serious daytime drinkers. And me. There were black bags under my eyes in the mirror. After a moment of inner conflict I bought a club soda and carried it to the phones in the back.

A few calls of a rather impersonal nature: to the permit board, General Camera and a couple of other rental outfits, even one of the rehab centers. There was a general consensus that some such film as Kevin had described had actually been shot in our fair city. I was somewhat reassured by the corroboration.

...
do not go, and you will also regret that …

It was still early for the airport, but it occurred to me that I could beat rush hour if I started right away. So I went across to the subway stop and got on the A train. It was a long ride and acutely tedious. I had forgotten to get a paper. But I could congratulate myself on saving five dollars on the JFK express. At Rockaway Boulevard I got out and waited for the train to Howard Beach. Then another change for the bus and then the TWA terminal.

I checked in and gave up my bag after taking the books out of it. There were hours left to kill and I exhausted the shops rather quickly. At an Olde English Pub in the terminal I consumed a vile excuse for a London broil and drank a couple of beers, which made me sleepy.

Now there was nothing at all to do but wait. I left the restaurant and parked myself in a leatherette chair near my gate. Muzak and the droning flight announcements hit me like Phenobarbital, and soon I felt much like a switched-off machine, an acceptable state. My flight boarded at twenty to seven. Kevin had booked me a window seat. Sweet of him, I thought. But there was some sort of tower delay and by the time the plane took off it was completely dark.

I turned down the meal and drank midget bottles of bourbon through the dinner service. Afterward I declined the movie also and instead read a bit of the thriller I’d bought the day before, so long ago it seemed. Small-time gangsters were murdering each other in Detroit, very relaxing. In a half hour I closed the book and put out the light. I was nowhere and it was no time and even my personality had been left behind somewhere along the way. Probably it would turn up to meet me in Rome, but by then its character might have changed. A change is as good as a holiday ...

But I woke up before the flight was over, with a clutching fear that I had lost something. Or rather I had hidden something, and now I couldn’t remember where or even what it was. I searched myself and found everything I was supposed to have: addresses, ticket, passport, checks, money. By then there was no chance of sleeping anymore. I ordered a cup of coffee and cracked the blind on my window.

Outside the airplane, the sky was melting into gray. I set my watch ahead to Rome time.

Once, I was very good at hiding things.

The sealed film cans.
WARNING EXPOSED FILM OPEN IN DARK ROOM ONLY.
Too risky, though, for more than once or twice.

Inside cameras or other items of equipment. Also risky, and only good for a small-volume, high-gain load.

The double suitcase switch. Almost one hundred percent risk free for the carrier. But there’s a better than average chance of losing the package.

And later there were other and better schemes. With Kevin as producer and me as head technician. But that had been a long time ago and this trip I had nothing to hide or recover.

So what did I have to be nervous about? Well, maybe it was just that there were about two more hours to Rome and I wasn’t going to be able to sleep and there was nothing to do but rattle the bones in the closet. But the skeleton that came strolling out this time wasn’t Kevin and it wasn’t Lauren. It was Jerry Hansen, who really
was
dead and had been for four years.

Jerry Hansen was twenty-three when I was thirty-five and he had just come out of NYU film school with three or four nice-looking sixteen-millimeter shorts and some impressive abilities as a cameraman and a naïve but consuming desire to become a director. Jerry Hansen got his diploma and walked all over town, dropping off his résumé, much as Kevin and I had done ten or twelve years before. But by the time Jerry got around to it, Kevin had rented a cubbyhole in the West Forties under the name of Chameleon International Filmworks, and this was one of the places Jerry dropped into.

If Jerry’s experience was the typical one, his visit to Chameleon would have been the brightest spot in a weary and frustrating day. Because on your first trip, you never get past the receptionist. The receptionist is always a woman and always young and usually gorgeous and she has on a pair of shoes worth more than your annual income, and in the couple of years she’s had her job she’s brushed off hundreds of star graduates from film school. She tells you the production manager is in California, and you hand her the résumé, and after the first few times you practically run for the door so as not to see what she does with it

The worst part, in my judgment, is how your feet get terribly blistered and sore. But I have a high tolerance for humiliation, or used to in those days.

Kevin didn’t have any receptionist. Chameleon was a one-and-a-half-man operation, if you count my peripheral involvement. Kevin had an answering machine and that was it, so he didn’t have any buffer when Jerry Hansen knocked on the door. Also he was between projects and he had quarreled with his last camera crew. Also he liked Jerry, who was a likable guy.

I wasn’t working with Kevin so much by then. I had worked my way around to an editor’s card and I was happy enough with that. It brought a lot less confusion and slightly better hours and a significantly smaller number of people who could jerk me around. Cutting was mostly an affair between me and the equipment, and I liked it that way. I was married by then, even if we weren’t exactly living together, and the security was appealing too. As for the other side of the business, I’d been retired for a couple of years. Not to mention qualms of conscience, the older I got the less I liked the idea of big jail, and the longer you keep doing a thing the more probable it is that someone will find out about it.

But I was still on the board of directors of Chameleon International Filmworks. In point of fact, I
was
the board of directors. And it still felt good to get a camera in my hands from time to time.

I liked Jerry Hansen too, once I met him, a couple of months later, when Kevin had his new thing cooking. He was eager and smart and seemed reliable enough to handle the heavy pressure of an understaffed shoot. There was a touch of avuncular interest on my side too, since he quite reminded me of myself at that age.

So the board of Chameleon International Filmworks approved the hiring of Jerry Hansen as second cameraman, first camera AC, and general “step ‘n’ fetchit” for the making of a pilot for cable TV. On spec. I won’t say anything about the concept except that it was as dumb and pointless as the best of them. The production end was one of those nifty bits of prestidigitation which have brought Kevin a certain amount of success by this time and will probably bring him a lot more before he’s done. The actors were getting paid out of profits. Jerry Hansen was getting a little over lunch money, a lot of promises, and a nice new line for his résumé. A couple of students would PA for a credit line. Kevin had the cash for film stock and rentals and the sound man, an old connection of ours who was known only as the Sparrow. You actually wrote out checks to him that said “Sparrow” and nothing else. He was a little odd, but sound men run to peculiar anyway, and he was good and patient and not too expensive and he would work without a boom man if it was in any way possible. I was first cameraman and I was getting paid too, after I explained to Kevin that I was too old and too busy to work for free.

A skeleton crew like that and you love each other or kill each other. And nobody got killed on this shoot, at least not right away. The Sparrow and Kevin and I already could work together with the efficiency of a single organism. Jerry Hansen fit in well, better than might have been expected. He knew what he was doing, but not so well that he couldn’t follow directions. He learned fast and he had enormous stamina. So I loved him. We all did.

It certainly wasn’t Jerry’s fault that the project ran out of money. If anyone was to blame it was Kevin, but you always run out of money anyway, it’s rule number one. And Kevin had to take all the heat, which was mainly coming from the actors at first, some of whom were beginning to make union noises, though it was a bit late in the game for that. Kevin used up what was left of his psychological credit convincing them that everything would be okay.

Did I know what was coming? Sure I did. But knowing my reservations on the subject, Kevin talked to Jerry first. I can just imagine how it went.

… See, Jerry, this is a very expensive business, you understand that … See, Jerry, we got bad cash flow problems right now ...

Well, Jerry was in for the distance anyway. He needed the picture to get finished. Besides, he loved us too by then. If the basic idea bothered him any I never heard about it. I don’t think he did any blushing and shrinking.

I did, though, when Kevin got around to me. And when I found out he was talking about dope I got really disgusted. You move enough dope to make anything and it takes up a lot of room. Which I pointed out to Kevin.

He’d already set up the buy, Kevin told me. Besides, I didn’t really have to get involved. Jerry Hansen had already agreed to do the traveling.

Then I got more mad. I didn’t think Kevin should be using Jerry for things like that. He was too young. He might choke. Kevin was manipulating him.

He wasn’t any younger than we used to be, Kevin suggested. And Kevin would go along to make sure everything went smooth.

So who needed me?

Advice, Kevin told me. I threw him out.

Then Jerry Hansen called me and said that he was working on a special project with Kevin and he wasn’t sure about some of the details and Kevin had said that maybe I could help out. Wasn’t I pleased with that recommendation? I bit my tongue, however. Jerry was getting into the fun part, being circumspect on the telephone.

In my concerned avuncular mode I asked him if he’d considered other options.

No, he said, he was committed to the picture.

Committed to the picture, Lord God.

I screamed at Kevin for setting me up that way and then we made up and I was in. It wasn’t qualitatively different from any of the others, because I was always just the planner. I don’t have the nerves to carry. I shiver and shake crossing borders even when I don’t have anything, which is always. But I was a good planner and this was one of my better plans and it really should have worked.