The Lost Expert, page 12
IT WAS A CLEAR, starry night. The crew built a bonfire on the beach by the lake. The flames clawed jealously at the moon, full and bright against layers of enshrouding greys. The crew cackled merrily. They cheered when one of them fed the blaze with another of the hunks of soggy wood they’d dragged from the low-lying patches of forest on the far side of the beach. If a piece was too big and wet, they helped the wet wood along with liberal shots of barbecue starter, each squirt instantly producing a bright red blaze yielding to oily green flames and smudged, brackish smoke. They passed around forties of Canadian Club and cheered when another dead solider was tossed into the lake, left to glint and burble, a bottle with no message.
Chris sat overlooking it all on the teetering picnic table positioned just outside his cabin. He nursed a can of beer, surveying the goings-on down below. He was thinking about Krunk’s uncle. What ever happened to that guy? Before Chris’s parents split, but after his grandpop became too old and frail to spend as much time with him, there had been a string of summers spent at Krunk’s Uncle Luke’s place. The boys had been ten, eleven, twelve. “Uncle Luke’s” was a constantly mutating plywood shack stuck in a buggy deciduous forest adorned with frequent swamps, deep glacial lakes, and dark cliffs jutting out of the wet earth, abruptly blocking the false paths and fake trails the boys followed like they were heading somewhere.
Uncle Luke oversaw the boys with a madman’s whims. Some days, he exploded into rage and barred them from the “cottage” till late at night while he went about the perpetual process of expanding the dwelling using scrap heaps of plywood, greyed-out two-by-fours, and rusted sheets of aluminum. Other times, he insisted on joining the boys in their games, taking on the role of soldier or hunter or tracker with a zeal as assiduous as it was discomfiting. Chris remembered — could this really have happened? — Uncle Luke outfitting them with armaments. Chris with an air pistol, Krunk with a rifle-looking thing, and Uncle Luke with a handgun. They crept through the woods to the edge of the swamp and at Uncle Luke’s whispered directive opened fire at a giant bullfrog. He thought of the way the frog had exploded. “Nothing left but the liquids!” Uncle Luke had extolled. Chris put his beer down. He remembered it so clearly. Uncle Luke’s round, red face.
What about the agreement? Chris thought. Sour, half-digested stew rose up, burning his throat. That short guy, the bald photographer. The grey under his eyes, the dark gap between his thin, sullen lips.
How was it possible that they’d never talked about Krunk’s lunatic uncle? The summers they’d spent, eyeing him warily as they sat outside the shack eating cold Chef Boyardee with their fingers, tossing the empty cans over their shoulders into the pressing forest. Summers like open secrets, things everyone knows but can’t bring themselves to say out loud. Those distant summers smelling of pine and puberty, their hair knotted with resin from the gnarled trees they challenged themselves to climb. A million years ago. Yesterday.
A large flame suddenly shot up, followed by whooping cheers and a bottle hitting water with a thud. Chris drank from his beer, forcing himself to swallow. The moon lit the camp, and Chris thought of the lights they used to illuminate film sets, fulgent and all-encompassing. Uncle Luke howling at the night, blasting off rounds with his .45 Colt, the sound echoing in Chris’s ears. That was the beginning, Chris thought. The beginning of what? Chris folded his arms against his chest. Nightfall, settling like a fog. First frost. Begin at the beginning. Drop out of college. Watch your former peers scuttle past, on their way, in a hurry. Chris wasn’t like them. He wasn’t on his way. Loneliness spreading in a slick. Krunk had everything. Parents to hate. A vision of himself. A career — better than a career. An anti-career. What did Chris have? Abruptly, Chris stood up. He drained his beer and stepped on the can, crushing it.
At the fire they fell quiet, nodding at him and quickly looking away, shuffling closer to one another as if for protection and comfort. Chris surveyed the group. Five guys and one burly lady, all of them dressed in jeans and sweatshirts emblazoned with the logos of TV shows — some new, some very, very old — shot decades ago on the cheap at Toronto soundstages. Starcraft, The Boys, Amazon, La Femme Nikita, Titans. They sported rough beards and wraparound shades, either pushed up into scraggly salt-and-pepper hair or dangling around their red, wattled necks. Their cellphones and pagers hung silently off their belts. They were drunk and melancholy, in the throes of the exhaustion of working people who’d known feast and famine and were solemnly working their way through a long, but ephemeral, banquet.
Chris rubbed his hands and leaned in, wanting the heat on his face. Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Then a man with a tattered Winnipeg Jets cap and a face like a dropped tomato spat at the coals.
“Helluva night,” the man, Frankie, said in Chris’s direction.
“Look at that moon!” Chris said agreeably. Obligingly the group raised their collective gaze. “You could get lost in there.” The group nodded, as if they all knew what he meant. One of them handed him the bottle of rye. Chris drank and passed it along.
The murmured conversations resumed. Frankie, the set builder, began talking about his winters, spent on a Hawaiian island camping on the beach. “It’s a whole community there, man,” Frankie told him. “We look out for each other. This one time …” Chris listened to the man talk, pictured their ramshackle, ephemeral village of tents and tarps. The wind and the surf and the campfire smoke. He’d never been to the ocean.
A hand on his shoulder. Chris looked up. It was Reed, face a furrowed shadow under his trademark Penguins cap.
“Mind if I borrow him?”
“Take him away, Capitan,” Frankie the set builder slurred.
THEY WALKED ALONG THE water, following a path that bordered the woods.
“What are you doing up?” Reed demanded. “You’re in wardrobe at six.” His voice, throaty and resigned, implied an artist’s weary burden: the long journey to first light.
“Wardrobe,” Chis said, yawning. “I don’t like that lady.”
“Eloise? What’s wrong with Eloise?”
“Ah, nothing,” Chris muttered. He kept forgetting the way Reed leapt on every offhand remark and comment.
“He doesn’t like Eloise,” Reed said to himself.
“She yelled at me.”
“She yelled at you?” Reed sounded amused. “What did she say?”
“She said that I was a ‘naughty boy’ for wearing my own stuff in a scene. She said it was against the rules. Unions and all that.”
“She said that to you?” Reed blew air through pursed lips. “Good old Eloise,” he said affectionately. Reed clapped Chris on the back. “But, seriously. Long day tomorrow.”
“What are you doing up?” Chris replied, grinning cheekily.
“Don’t sleep much,” Reed grunted. “The doctor gave me these pills.”
“You don’t take them?”
“Ah, shit, Holmes. I’m an old man. What do I want with fucking sleep?”
How old are you? Chris wanted to ask. But he stopped himself. Reed pulled a cigar out of his pocket and paused to light it. They stood next to shallow water propping up browning lily pads. A bridge of grey logs and yellowed rope continued the path.
“Leads to an island,” Reed said exhaling.
“Shall we?” Chris stepped onto the bridge. Wood cracked, and the rope strained. Reed put a heavy hand on his arm, stopping him.
“Hey, Holmes.”
He looked back. Reed’s thick eyebrows reduced his eyes to shadow.
“Be careful. You’re the star of the show, remember.”
Snake’s Island was a jumbled peninsula of rocks and boulders, the cracks between them presumably home to any number of black, sinewy water snakes invisible in their dark, wet crevices. Chris and Reed found perches on the rocks and looked out over the lake at the moon’s rippling reflection.
“This place reminds me of the camp I went to when I was a kid,” Reed said, puffing meditatively on his cigar. “Jew camp. Camp Gesher. Means ‘bridge’ in Hebrew. We were supposed to be sharing everything. You got a candy bar in the mail from your mom, you had to break it into ten pieces. It was supposed to be like a kibbutz. We chopped vegetables, collected trash, cleaned the toilets. In return they taught us Israeli dancing, knot tying, and bonfire building. We soaked thick ropes in gas and spelled Am Yisreal Chai out in the water then lit the ropes on fire. The Land of Israel Lives! Saturday night everyone stood on the beach with their arms around one another’s shoulders watching the burn and singing ‘Hatikva’ at the top of their lungs.”
Reed glanced over at Chris.
“You with me here, Holmes?”
“Not really,” Chris admitted. “Hatik-wa?”
Reed chuckled and pulled on his cigar.
“Fuckin’ Hatikva,” he said, exhaling sweet smoke.
They sat in silence.
“So,” Reed said, stabbing into the night with the red, glowing tip of his stogie. “When did you quit?”
“Ahh.” Reed kept doing this to him. Catching him off guard. “A while ago?”
A frog bleated from the nearby underbrush.
“Haven’t heard that song in a long time,” Reed said.
“Bullfrog,” Chris said guiltily.
“Reading the Times, you’d think that there wasn’t one left in all eternity.”
Chris leaned down, picked up a pebble, and threw it in the water.
Reed puffed on his cigar.
At the bonfire, someone laughed then started into a hacking cough.
“Roadies,” Reed said. Chris didn’t say anything. He could feel Reed’s eyes on him, examining him. “Goddamn!” Reed said. “You’re like a sphinx these days. Almost makes me miss the other Holmes. Remember him?”
Chris froze.
Reed didn’t wait for an answer.
“The one who sat in my office flexing his biceps and telling me about the vintage DeLorean he’d just bought for three point two million dollars. Back to the Future, eh, Holmes? That’s what I said. Remember that? You seemed confused, and I thought, ‘Well, he’s not the sharpest blade in the block.’ But I guess I was wrong.”
They listened for the frog. It had gone silent.
“I guess.”
“You guess.” Reed sucked on his cigar and exhaled dramatically.
“You think he watches his movies?” Chris said.
“Who?”
“You know. Back to the Future.”
Reed’s tone softened. “Poor fucker. He’s a good guy. For a Canadian.” He opened his arms to encompass the tree-lined lake. “Canada. Look at this shit. Wasted on these dopes. We should just invade. Call it, like, Michigan North. Eh, Holmes?”
“Yeah. I think I saw that movie.”
Reed made a pained face. “That was not a movie.”
Chris giggled, let himself relax.
“You still got it?” Reed demanded.
“What?”
“The car.”
Chris shrugged. “I guess.”
“I guess. Used to be you wouldn’t shut up. Especially about your toys. Now when you talk it’s like you’re on some different plane of existence. You’re like some kind of antimatter philosopher or something. It’s like you should be in the crazy house, but, somehow, you pass. You’re like — what’s-his-name? Chauncey! You’re like fucking Chauncey!”
Chris grinned, his stomach gurgling nervously. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“What doesn’t?”
Chris didn’t answer.
“So, what does matter?”
Chris hesitated. “This. What we’re doing. The Lost Expert.”
Reed took one last furious puff on his cigar then tossed it into the water.
They walked back the way they came. The air was still, and Chris felt the energy draining from him, his feet stumbling on shadowed roots and rocks.
Then, out of nowhere, Reed stopped and held up a wavering finger. “You feel that?” He didn’t wait for Chris to answer. “Getting cooler. Well, fuck. That sucks.”
Script 7
INT. BAKERY — MORNING
THE LOST EXPERT sits at his table with his mug of coffee and a plate of Mandelbrot. Outside, the day darkens and it begins to drizzle. The door to the bakery opens. Enter a MAN IN HIS FIFTIES. He wears a tweed overcoat over a tailored suit and a felt homburg with black band. A hush falls in the café as people stop talking to stare fearfully at the man. The man approaches ESTHER.
J.P. BARTNER
I’m looking for someone. I don’t know his name. He, ah, helps people — find things.
The man stares into the eyes of the waitress as if refusing to acknowledge his own hesitation.
ESTHER
(frowning)
There is no man like that here.
J.P. BARTNER
I was told he comes here.
ESTHER
(shrugging)
I don’t know such a man.
THE LOST EXPERT
(calling from his table)
It’s all right, Esther.
The man strides impatiently to the Lost Expert’s table. He stands over him imperiously.
J.P. BARTNER
You helped my granddaughter?
THE LOST EXPERT
Your granddaughter?
J.P. BARTNER
(impatiently)
You found her cat.
THE LOST EXPERT
(smiling faintly)
Missy.
J.P. BARTNER
(already sitting down)
May I join you?
THE LOST EXPERT
Please do.
J.P. BARTNER
And you found that (lowering his voice, looking around) Jew kid?
THE LOST EXPERT
Yes, I found him. I work with anyone, regardless of —
J.P. BARTNER
Never mind that.
The Lost Expert falls silent and stares at the man.
J.P. BARTNER
(suddenly extending a hand)
J.P. Bartner.
THE LOST EXPERT
Bartner’s? As in, “Pile ‘em high, sell ‘em low?”
J.P. BARTNER
(grimacing)
We offer value and satisfaction.
THE LOST EXPERT
My wife shops there.
J.P. BARTNER
A smart woman, I’m sure.
ESTHER
(appearing over Bartner’s shoulder with her mother watching anxiously from behind the counter)
Can I get you somethin’, mister?
J.P. BARTNER
Coffee, strong. And hot.
THE LOST EXPERT
(smiling faintly)
I should warn you. The coffee here is neither strong nor hot.
J.P. Bartner considers his surroundings dubiously.
J.P. BARTNER
This is the first time I’ve been to the Jewish quarter.
THE LOST EXPERT
I quite like it here. But then again, there don’t seem to be many other establishments where I’m welcome. Since you’re here, you should try the cookie they make, it’s called the man-del-brat. They’re excellent. Here. (pushing the plate toward Bartner) Try one.
J.P. BARTNER
(dismissing the suggestion with
the wave of a hand)
My granddaughter said you were a waiter at the Sutton.
THE LOST EXPERT
I used to work there.
ESTHER
Here’s your coffee.
Esther drops the coffee on to the table. The thin liquid spills over into the saucer.
J.P. BARTNER
(ignoring her)
So, what? You’re some kinda psychic? You do tricks, like Houdini?
THE LOST EXPERT
I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.
J.P. BARTNER
How’s that?
THE LOST EXPERT
I’m not a spiritualist. I don’t have any psychic “powers.” I just try and help people.
J.P. BARTNER
So, like a P.I.?
THE LOST EXPERT
I’m not a detective. I don’t sneak around.
J.P. BARTNER
Just as well. I’ve gone through three already.
THE LOST EXPERT
You’re looking for someone.
J.P. BARTNER
(sighing, pained)
Nothing. No trace of him. Nobody knows a darn thing.
THE LOST EXPERT
There are always traces.
J.P. BARTNER
What’s that supposed to mean?
The Lost Expert is silent, expressionless.
J.P. BARTNER
Look, you come recommended. And not just from my granddaughter, if you catch my drift. People in high places think you can help me, and for some reason they seem to want to help you. I don’t get it, but, okay, I’ve got nothing left to lose. But I need to know that you won’t — Can I trust you? How do I know I can trust you?
The Lost Expert opens his large hands and puts them face up on the table. The Lost Expert’s weathered hands are worn, creased with deep lines. He stares into Bartner’s eyes.
J.P. BARTNER
(sighing, resigned)
It’s my brother. He’s missing. Lost. He wandered off. (lowering his voice) He has problems. He was in a place. Very well appointed. The best care. They’re supposed to watch him twenty-four hours a day. Somehow, he ran off. Been six months with no trace of him. He’s clever, my brother. Disturbed, but clever. My mother is very upset. She’s elderly, in her eighties. I hate to see her like this. He’s probably dead, I know. But if he’s dead, then where’s the body?
