The Lost Expert, page 13
THE LOST EXPERT
He’s not dead.
J.P. BARTNER
He’s not dead. You would say that, wouldn’t you? You want the job, right?
THE LOST EXPERT
You only have to pay me what you think I deserve.
J.P. Bartner gulps at his coffee and makes a disapproving face.
THE LOST EXPERT
It’s not something I can explain.
But I know it. He’s out there.
J.P. BARTNER
How much to get started?
Bartner extracts an envelope from his coat pocket and slides it across the table. The Lost Expert stares at the envelope but doesn’t touch it. Bartner lurches up. He throws a dollar bill and a card on the table.
J.P. BARTNER
Here’s my assistant’s calling card. All further communication will be through him.
The Lost Expert watches Bartner. He stops at the door to the bakery, then, looking suddenly small and stricken, he turns back to the Lost Expert.
J.P. BARTNER
He’s my only brother.
The Lost Expert nods, his face set.
EXT. LARGE MANSION CONVERTED INTO A MENTAL HEALTH CARE FACILITY — LATE MORNING
THE LOST EXPERT arrives in the back of a Packard limousine. The uniformed driver opens the door for him. An imposing Victorian building looms over a groomed front lawn glistening with flower beds and shining green grass. The Lost Expert shields his eyes from the sun and directs his gaze past the building’s daunting entranceway and up at the windows of the building.
The Lost Expert slowly mounts the front steps. Dragonflies zigzag overhead, and a squirrel with an acorn in his mouth rushes up a drainpipe. A single cloud moves across the blue sky. A flock of birds, rising from the trees, disturbed, settles back down again. A plaque beside the door: Waverly House. Please Ring for Entry.
INT. A LONG HALLWAY
THE LOST EXPERT and DR. WONG, a thin, slightly stooped man in his sixties with receding grey hair, proceed down the hall. Light slides through ornate glass windows and catches on hardwood floors polished to a shine. Dr. Wong, elegantly dressed in vest and bow tie draped by a starched white doctor’s jacket, walks deliberately and slowly. Wong and the Lost Expert proceed through the corridor, their footsteps the only sound disturbing the sepulchral silence.
WONG
(stopping in front of an imposing wooden door and unlocking the door with a key)This was his room.
INT. BEDROOM IN THE INSTITUTION
The room is large, painted a soft sky blue. There is a plush bed, a desk, and a leather armchair next to a fireplace. One wall features a bookshelf lined with titles. Sunlight flows through the large window. The Lost Expert looks out the window. It is a long way down to the grounds.
WONG
(grimacing)
That’s the window, yes. Staff were instructed to monitor him frequently. But there was no way to know that he would risk his life in this manner. The grounds are monitored at all times by our guards, but somehow he evaded them, and the dogs as well. We engaged the Pinkertons. Several of their best attempted to track his whereabouts, but they failed.
THE LOST EXPERT
(interrupting)
I’m not here to review your security procedures.
Dr. Wong falls silent. The Lost Expert prowls the room. He stops in front of an imposing gramophone embedded in an oak stand.
THE LOST EXPERT
Did he enjoy listening to gramophone recordings?
WONG
He did. He enjoyed a wide range of recordings. It was the only thing that seemed to calm him. But more recently he began listening to one recording over and over again.
THE LOST EXPERT
What recording was that?
WONG
It did not appear to have a name, exactly. It was a sort of spiritual recording. It appeared to have been recorded in the south. A folklore compilation. A “race recording,” I believe.
THE LOST EXPERT
I would like to hear the recording in question.
WONG
I’ll have it brought up from the basement.
The Lost Expert opens the drawers of the desk. He finds sheets of paper. He flips through them. Nearly every page has a detailed pencil sketch of a desolate cabin in a woods.
WONG
In the last few weeks, he drew that image repeatedly. He would not discuss its significance. We encourage self-expression in our patients, but unfortunately, after an incident in which one of the staff members was threatened, we were forced to remove his pencils.
THE LOST EXPERT
I’d like to take a drawing with me.
WONG
(nodding)
Very well.
The two men are enveloped by the near-total silence of the room.
EXT. THE REAR GROUNDS OF WAVERLY HOUSE
DR. WONG and THE LOST EXPERT walk through the lush grounds, occasionally passing staff accompanying shuffling patients wrapped in pajamas, robes, and slippers.
THE LOST EXPERT
(gazing around the lush gardens)
And he had no visitors?
WONG
Very few.
THE LOST EXPERT
He did have visitors?
WONG
His brother would visit briefly once a year. More recently, a cousin came to see him several times.
THE LOST EXPERT
(sharply)
When did this start?
WONG
About ten months ago, I believe.
THE LOST EXPERT
Was that around the time he became more unresponsive?
WONG
(rattled)
Yes. I suppose.
THE LOST EXPERT
What was the cousin’s name? Do you know what he wanted?
WONG
Visits with family are not monitored.
May I ask why the concern?
THE LOST EXPERT
Michael’s parents were both only children. He did not have any cousins.
INT. DR. WONG’S OFFICE — LATE AFTERNOON
A large, prominent oak desk faces a couch and two leather armchairs. Shelves are lined with books about psychiatry and psychology.
WONG
(seated at his desk)
Michael went through an abrupt change in the last few months before he left us. In our sessions he would refuse to respond, just stared at a point over my head.
THE LOST EXPERT leans back in the armchair facing Dr. Wong’s wide, burnished desk. The stiff leather creaks. Looming above the doctor’s chair, a painting. A thick forest at dusk. The muted purples, blues, and browns. A rippling creek.
THE LOST EXPERT
Is this where he sat?
WONG
Yes.
THE LOST EXPERT
(pointing to the painting)
That is what he stared at.
WONG
(turning, considering the painting, surprised)
This painting?
THE LOST EXPERT
What does this represent? Where was
it done?
WONG
It’s a scene from the Tanoquin Forest Reserve. It’s one of the largest untampered boreal forests in our hemisphere. It begins about two hours southeast of here. Most of our patients find the image quite tranquil.
There is a knock on the door.
WONG
Excuse me for a moment.
Wong gets up and opens the door. A BURLY, RED-FACED MAN in a white orderly’s uniform says something quietly to Dr. Wong, and they both step out into the hall. The Lost Expert gets up and moves behind Dr. Wong’s desk to inspect the painting. The luminescent dusk suggests something foreboding. A swamp occupies the foreground, its waters still and heavy. From the hall come smatterings of a hushed, intense conversation. Dr. Wong returns to the office. He closes the door and leans against it, as if slightly shaken.
THE LOST EXPERT
Dr. Wong?
WONG
The record could not be located. It is missing.
Section 8
THEY MOVED SLOWLY THROUGH the woods, Reed at the head of their snaking line. Snakes, Chris thought as he followed the director’s steps. The tightly packed grey-green firs were readying for hibernation, their needles prickly and unforgiving in the almost-frosty morning. For as long as Chris had known him, Krunk had harboured a snake obsession. It culminated in his organizing a sparsely but virulently attended Bad Snakes film festival held at an underground cinema accessed through an alley off Spadina. Chris, of course, had been pressed into the role of ticket-taker, concession stand operator — no-name beers and smokes, grocery store popcorn in paper bags — and crowd wrangler as the all-day, all-night event sluggishly scrolled through a slate of B-movies — Anaconda, King Cobra, Python, Piranhaconda — culminating in a midnight double feature showing both Snakes on a Plane and its straight-to-video rip-off Snakes on a Train, these final movies screened, bizarrely, with the audio turned off, alternative soundtrack provided by an experimental jazz band called FUGH whose members played atonal horns through three hours of serpents versus humans trapped on moving vehicles. Krunk, high on speed he’d upbraided Chris for declining, took the stage both before and after the films to rant about how snakes were biblically miscast creatures, innocent victims of the myth of evolution. They were beautiful, he insisted, portals to a time before there was a world, when snakes — the primordial not-yet of slithering, interwoven, scaly bodies — were all that was or would ever be.
Chris dragged his feet, kicked up shallow puddles of pine needles. They were moving slowly but surely toward a spot in the deep woods only Reed could identify. Chris didn’t mind the hike, though of course he and Reed were the only ones without gear; the ten ragged and hungover crew were hampered by tripods, lights, batteries, booms. Chris could hear them breathing heavily from their beer bellies, stumbling and cursing as sharp boughs slapped faces their hands were too full to protect. It was a nice change, not having to do the grunt work. They were, he was sure, not enjoying this outing nearly as much as he was. Reed paused to consult his topographical map. Chris took the opportunity to suck in an extra-large gulp of the fresh air. Reed had been right. A cold front had come in. The cold made deep breaths almost painful, like those polar bear swims, Chris thought, Speedo-clad urban warriors running into winter Great Lakes, their friends cheering them on, filling their pledge forms, $10 or $20 for Haiti, for prostate cancer, for manatees and dolphins and red-tailed newts. Nobody raised money for the snake. Never for the snake. Maybe Krunk was onto something. The snake as a symbol of how humanity had cleaved itself from the natural world right from the beginning.
In those summers with Uncle Luke, Krunk’s obsession had guided their days. Chris often thought of the hot, dry final summer they spent up north, an entire summer devoted to the hunt for the Massasauga rattler, Ontario’s only poisonous snake, whose territory theoretically included the forests and Precambrian rock slabs framing ice-age lakes they spent their days exploring, unmolested by any civilizing force. They were twelve years old with time on their hands. They found plenty of snakes that summer, black and coiled in the cracks of the rocks, yellow and serpentine in the murky olive water lapping the shoreline, emerald and wriggling in the makeshift paths the boys formed as they tramped through the woods on their way to various hideouts and hidden waterways. But they never saw the rattler. As the summer went on and their search remained fruitless, their outings became increasingly ritualistic, with Krunk setting the agenda. Everywhere they went, they hunted snakes, chased them, flushed them out, grabbed them by their necks, their bodies writhing, twisting, turning, their eyes bulging, their angry tongues darting in and out of their oblong mouths. Krunk led them on increasingly ardent marches that didn’t end until past dusk, any snakes long since retreated into their lairs.
Chris picked up his pace as Reed made a sudden turn and disappeared into a thicket. Krunk, Laurie, Reed. He’d always been a follower. Was it so bad? To be pulled in the wake of someone else’s obsession? That’s what he was doing now, wasn’t he? Following a man who wasn’t even there. Reed popped back into view. He had stopped in front of a rocky outcropping that all but blanked out the clear blue sky somewhere way above.
“Up there,” Reed half-gasped, the air catching in his throat and wheezing out.
“Up there?”
Reed had replaced his Penguins ball cap with a battered lime green toque sporting an orange and white pompom. He was wearing a lined corduroy jacket, his usual dirty jeans, and a pair of expensive hiking boots that gave him the air of an eccentric mountaineer.
“Goddamn cigars,” Reed barked.
Then he laughed, which turned into a cough that continued until he managed to expectorate a large blob of yellow phlegm onto a lichen-covered boulder that Chris had just been about to take a seat on.
By now the rest of the crew had struggled over. They heaved down their equipment, drained bottles of water, unzipped ski jackets, and gazed warily at the cliff that blocked their path.
“Oh yeah, we’re going up,” Reed yelled gleefully at them. “That’s the shot we want! Panoramic vistas, people! Vistas!”
The crew groaned. “That’s what helicopters are for, asshole,” one of them muttered.
To which Reed replied without taking his eyes off the cliff, “No copters. I’m a nervous flier,” which generated chuckles. Everyone knew Reed was a notorious flier, famous for backing out of flights minutes before takeoff, his sudden premonitions of doom sabotaging meticulously planned agendas and schedules.
“Take five,” Reed yelled, “then we’re going up.” He pushed past Chris and hefted himself onto the lichen rock seat, a manoeuvre Chris watched with a straight face he attributed to his recent crash course in method acting.
“You know,” Reed said, oblivious, his low grumble-whisper beckoning Chris closer. “Most of my family died in a forest like this.”
“They did?” Chris didn’t get it. Reed had told him several times about his two ex-wives, both of whom he claimed to still love madly, and three estranged children, no mention of ongoing love, but as far as he could remember they were all fine; even his parents were alive and kicking, living out their nineties in some middle American suburb somewhere.
“My grandparents’ brothers and sisters, their children, dogs, cats, the town goat. All of ’em, dragged out into the cold Lithuanian woods and shot dead.” Reed gestured to the bowl of the forest floor where his crew had taken up various positions of repose, as if this had been the exact spot where it happened. “Well,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe not the goat.”
“Why?” Chris said, only somewhat less confused than before.
“Why not the goat?”
“Why were they killed?”
“What’s the difference,” Reed asked sardonically, “between a pizza and a Jew?”
“Huh?”
“The pizza doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven.”
“That’s … that’s not funny, man.”
“Yeah, well, neither was Schindler’s List, ya know? Or that other one with that mincing Italian.”
“Life Is Beautiful,” Chris said dutifully, finally understanding. Krunk had gone through a thankfully brief concentration camp movie phase.
“Yeah,” Reed said.
A gust of wind pushed through, rattling the trees.
“This is my Holocaust movie,” Reed announced.
“This is a Holocaust movie?”
“Don’t tell New Line,” he mock-whispered. “They think it’s an action flick.” Reed swiped at his sweaty brow with the heavy fabric of his jacket. “Anyway, when all is said and done, this one is for the Razakovskys of Lithuania, aka the Reeds of Pittsburgh, god only knows how we ended up there.” Reed looked skyward. “Of course,” he went on, “it won’t matter to my mother. As far as she’s concerned, it’s all over, baby blue.”
“What is?”
“The line,” Reed said jovially. “The Raza-Reeds. Barring extremely unlikely unforeseen circumstances, especially since the vasectomy, the line dies with me.”
“But don’t you have —?”
“The kids don’t count, I’m sorry to say. Beth was Jewish and we had Bobby, but he’s a boy, and he’s gay, so that’s no good. Then I married Zara the Ethiopian supermodel princess, but she was the wrong kind of Ethiopian, no airlift to the holy land for her; we had us a couple of girls, but, well, as far as my mother is concerned, black Princess Zara couldn’t make Jews no matter what, so that’s it,” Reed announced glumly.
In the sky above, a lone plane propelled past, rumbling low over the trees as if pulled down by the lakes it was designed to land on.
“Ugh,” Reed said. “I hate flying in those. Don’t you hate those?”
“Dunno,” Chris said breezily. “Haven’t tried it.”
Reed looked at him strangely.
“I mean, uh …” Chris felt acid surge in his stomach. He shrugged, trying to affect nonchalance.
“Well,” Reed boomed suddenly. “What are we waiting for, people?” He clapped his meaty hands.
THEY REACHED THE TOP an hour later, the crew gasping then groaning upon seeing that the plateau of the cliff Reed had forced them to climb flattened out into a forest floor dominated by tall, thick-limbed trees. The dense forest guarded another hillside, this one sweeping up into a ridge standing between them and anything that might be considered even remotely panoramic.
“All right,” Reed said, “no need to panic.” He consulted his map with furrowed brow. Chris scanned the forest, not particularly concerned about the fate of the excursion. Reed had invited him on it while making it clear that the journey was entirely optional — for the star. Curious, and with nothing else to do, Chris had tagged along, though he probably shouldn’t have. He had to stop talking to Reed. To anyone. They knew more about Thomson than he did. Thomson Holmes probably owned a float plane. He was probably in the goddamn thing right now.
He’s not dead.
J.P. BARTNER
He’s not dead. You would say that, wouldn’t you? You want the job, right?
THE LOST EXPERT
You only have to pay me what you think I deserve.
J.P. Bartner gulps at his coffee and makes a disapproving face.
THE LOST EXPERT
It’s not something I can explain.
But I know it. He’s out there.
J.P. BARTNER
How much to get started?
Bartner extracts an envelope from his coat pocket and slides it across the table. The Lost Expert stares at the envelope but doesn’t touch it. Bartner lurches up. He throws a dollar bill and a card on the table.
J.P. BARTNER
Here’s my assistant’s calling card. All further communication will be through him.
The Lost Expert watches Bartner. He stops at the door to the bakery, then, looking suddenly small and stricken, he turns back to the Lost Expert.
J.P. BARTNER
He’s my only brother.
The Lost Expert nods, his face set.
EXT. LARGE MANSION CONVERTED INTO A MENTAL HEALTH CARE FACILITY — LATE MORNING
THE LOST EXPERT arrives in the back of a Packard limousine. The uniformed driver opens the door for him. An imposing Victorian building looms over a groomed front lawn glistening with flower beds and shining green grass. The Lost Expert shields his eyes from the sun and directs his gaze past the building’s daunting entranceway and up at the windows of the building.
The Lost Expert slowly mounts the front steps. Dragonflies zigzag overhead, and a squirrel with an acorn in his mouth rushes up a drainpipe. A single cloud moves across the blue sky. A flock of birds, rising from the trees, disturbed, settles back down again. A plaque beside the door: Waverly House. Please Ring for Entry.
INT. A LONG HALLWAY
THE LOST EXPERT and DR. WONG, a thin, slightly stooped man in his sixties with receding grey hair, proceed down the hall. Light slides through ornate glass windows and catches on hardwood floors polished to a shine. Dr. Wong, elegantly dressed in vest and bow tie draped by a starched white doctor’s jacket, walks deliberately and slowly. Wong and the Lost Expert proceed through the corridor, their footsteps the only sound disturbing the sepulchral silence.
WONG
(stopping in front of an imposing wooden door and unlocking the door with a key)This was his room.
INT. BEDROOM IN THE INSTITUTION
The room is large, painted a soft sky blue. There is a plush bed, a desk, and a leather armchair next to a fireplace. One wall features a bookshelf lined with titles. Sunlight flows through the large window. The Lost Expert looks out the window. It is a long way down to the grounds.
WONG
(grimacing)
That’s the window, yes. Staff were instructed to monitor him frequently. But there was no way to know that he would risk his life in this manner. The grounds are monitored at all times by our guards, but somehow he evaded them, and the dogs as well. We engaged the Pinkertons. Several of their best attempted to track his whereabouts, but they failed.
THE LOST EXPERT
(interrupting)
I’m not here to review your security procedures.
Dr. Wong falls silent. The Lost Expert prowls the room. He stops in front of an imposing gramophone embedded in an oak stand.
THE LOST EXPERT
Did he enjoy listening to gramophone recordings?
WONG
He did. He enjoyed a wide range of recordings. It was the only thing that seemed to calm him. But more recently he began listening to one recording over and over again.
THE LOST EXPERT
What recording was that?
WONG
It did not appear to have a name, exactly. It was a sort of spiritual recording. It appeared to have been recorded in the south. A folklore compilation. A “race recording,” I believe.
THE LOST EXPERT
I would like to hear the recording in question.
WONG
I’ll have it brought up from the basement.
The Lost Expert opens the drawers of the desk. He finds sheets of paper. He flips through them. Nearly every page has a detailed pencil sketch of a desolate cabin in a woods.
WONG
In the last few weeks, he drew that image repeatedly. He would not discuss its significance. We encourage self-expression in our patients, but unfortunately, after an incident in which one of the staff members was threatened, we were forced to remove his pencils.
THE LOST EXPERT
I’d like to take a drawing with me.
WONG
(nodding)
Very well.
The two men are enveloped by the near-total silence of the room.
EXT. THE REAR GROUNDS OF WAVERLY HOUSE
DR. WONG and THE LOST EXPERT walk through the lush grounds, occasionally passing staff accompanying shuffling patients wrapped in pajamas, robes, and slippers.
THE LOST EXPERT
(gazing around the lush gardens)
And he had no visitors?
WONG
Very few.
THE LOST EXPERT
He did have visitors?
WONG
His brother would visit briefly once a year. More recently, a cousin came to see him several times.
THE LOST EXPERT
(sharply)
When did this start?
WONG
About ten months ago, I believe.
THE LOST EXPERT
Was that around the time he became more unresponsive?
WONG
(rattled)
Yes. I suppose.
THE LOST EXPERT
What was the cousin’s name? Do you know what he wanted?
WONG
Visits with family are not monitored.
May I ask why the concern?
THE LOST EXPERT
Michael’s parents were both only children. He did not have any cousins.
INT. DR. WONG’S OFFICE — LATE AFTERNOON
A large, prominent oak desk faces a couch and two leather armchairs. Shelves are lined with books about psychiatry and psychology.
WONG
(seated at his desk)
Michael went through an abrupt change in the last few months before he left us. In our sessions he would refuse to respond, just stared at a point over my head.
THE LOST EXPERT leans back in the armchair facing Dr. Wong’s wide, burnished desk. The stiff leather creaks. Looming above the doctor’s chair, a painting. A thick forest at dusk. The muted purples, blues, and browns. A rippling creek.
THE LOST EXPERT
Is this where he sat?
WONG
Yes.
THE LOST EXPERT
(pointing to the painting)
That is what he stared at.
WONG
(turning, considering the painting, surprised)
This painting?
THE LOST EXPERT
What does this represent? Where was
it done?
WONG
It’s a scene from the Tanoquin Forest Reserve. It’s one of the largest untampered boreal forests in our hemisphere. It begins about two hours southeast of here. Most of our patients find the image quite tranquil.
There is a knock on the door.
WONG
Excuse me for a moment.
Wong gets up and opens the door. A BURLY, RED-FACED MAN in a white orderly’s uniform says something quietly to Dr. Wong, and they both step out into the hall. The Lost Expert gets up and moves behind Dr. Wong’s desk to inspect the painting. The luminescent dusk suggests something foreboding. A swamp occupies the foreground, its waters still and heavy. From the hall come smatterings of a hushed, intense conversation. Dr. Wong returns to the office. He closes the door and leans against it, as if slightly shaken.
THE LOST EXPERT
Dr. Wong?
WONG
The record could not be located. It is missing.
Section 8
THEY MOVED SLOWLY THROUGH the woods, Reed at the head of their snaking line. Snakes, Chris thought as he followed the director’s steps. The tightly packed grey-green firs were readying for hibernation, their needles prickly and unforgiving in the almost-frosty morning. For as long as Chris had known him, Krunk had harboured a snake obsession. It culminated in his organizing a sparsely but virulently attended Bad Snakes film festival held at an underground cinema accessed through an alley off Spadina. Chris, of course, had been pressed into the role of ticket-taker, concession stand operator — no-name beers and smokes, grocery store popcorn in paper bags — and crowd wrangler as the all-day, all-night event sluggishly scrolled through a slate of B-movies — Anaconda, King Cobra, Python, Piranhaconda — culminating in a midnight double feature showing both Snakes on a Plane and its straight-to-video rip-off Snakes on a Train, these final movies screened, bizarrely, with the audio turned off, alternative soundtrack provided by an experimental jazz band called FUGH whose members played atonal horns through three hours of serpents versus humans trapped on moving vehicles. Krunk, high on speed he’d upbraided Chris for declining, took the stage both before and after the films to rant about how snakes were biblically miscast creatures, innocent victims of the myth of evolution. They were beautiful, he insisted, portals to a time before there was a world, when snakes — the primordial not-yet of slithering, interwoven, scaly bodies — were all that was or would ever be.
Chris dragged his feet, kicked up shallow puddles of pine needles. They were moving slowly but surely toward a spot in the deep woods only Reed could identify. Chris didn’t mind the hike, though of course he and Reed were the only ones without gear; the ten ragged and hungover crew were hampered by tripods, lights, batteries, booms. Chris could hear them breathing heavily from their beer bellies, stumbling and cursing as sharp boughs slapped faces their hands were too full to protect. It was a nice change, not having to do the grunt work. They were, he was sure, not enjoying this outing nearly as much as he was. Reed paused to consult his topographical map. Chris took the opportunity to suck in an extra-large gulp of the fresh air. Reed had been right. A cold front had come in. The cold made deep breaths almost painful, like those polar bear swims, Chris thought, Speedo-clad urban warriors running into winter Great Lakes, their friends cheering them on, filling their pledge forms, $10 or $20 for Haiti, for prostate cancer, for manatees and dolphins and red-tailed newts. Nobody raised money for the snake. Never for the snake. Maybe Krunk was onto something. The snake as a symbol of how humanity had cleaved itself from the natural world right from the beginning.
In those summers with Uncle Luke, Krunk’s obsession had guided their days. Chris often thought of the hot, dry final summer they spent up north, an entire summer devoted to the hunt for the Massasauga rattler, Ontario’s only poisonous snake, whose territory theoretically included the forests and Precambrian rock slabs framing ice-age lakes they spent their days exploring, unmolested by any civilizing force. They were twelve years old with time on their hands. They found plenty of snakes that summer, black and coiled in the cracks of the rocks, yellow and serpentine in the murky olive water lapping the shoreline, emerald and wriggling in the makeshift paths the boys formed as they tramped through the woods on their way to various hideouts and hidden waterways. But they never saw the rattler. As the summer went on and their search remained fruitless, their outings became increasingly ritualistic, with Krunk setting the agenda. Everywhere they went, they hunted snakes, chased them, flushed them out, grabbed them by their necks, their bodies writhing, twisting, turning, their eyes bulging, their angry tongues darting in and out of their oblong mouths. Krunk led them on increasingly ardent marches that didn’t end until past dusk, any snakes long since retreated into their lairs.
Chris picked up his pace as Reed made a sudden turn and disappeared into a thicket. Krunk, Laurie, Reed. He’d always been a follower. Was it so bad? To be pulled in the wake of someone else’s obsession? That’s what he was doing now, wasn’t he? Following a man who wasn’t even there. Reed popped back into view. He had stopped in front of a rocky outcropping that all but blanked out the clear blue sky somewhere way above.
“Up there,” Reed half-gasped, the air catching in his throat and wheezing out.
“Up there?”
Reed had replaced his Penguins ball cap with a battered lime green toque sporting an orange and white pompom. He was wearing a lined corduroy jacket, his usual dirty jeans, and a pair of expensive hiking boots that gave him the air of an eccentric mountaineer.
“Goddamn cigars,” Reed barked.
Then he laughed, which turned into a cough that continued until he managed to expectorate a large blob of yellow phlegm onto a lichen-covered boulder that Chris had just been about to take a seat on.
By now the rest of the crew had struggled over. They heaved down their equipment, drained bottles of water, unzipped ski jackets, and gazed warily at the cliff that blocked their path.
“Oh yeah, we’re going up,” Reed yelled gleefully at them. “That’s the shot we want! Panoramic vistas, people! Vistas!”
The crew groaned. “That’s what helicopters are for, asshole,” one of them muttered.
To which Reed replied without taking his eyes off the cliff, “No copters. I’m a nervous flier,” which generated chuckles. Everyone knew Reed was a notorious flier, famous for backing out of flights minutes before takeoff, his sudden premonitions of doom sabotaging meticulously planned agendas and schedules.
“Take five,” Reed yelled, “then we’re going up.” He pushed past Chris and hefted himself onto the lichen rock seat, a manoeuvre Chris watched with a straight face he attributed to his recent crash course in method acting.
“You know,” Reed said, oblivious, his low grumble-whisper beckoning Chris closer. “Most of my family died in a forest like this.”
“They did?” Chris didn’t get it. Reed had told him several times about his two ex-wives, both of whom he claimed to still love madly, and three estranged children, no mention of ongoing love, but as far as he could remember they were all fine; even his parents were alive and kicking, living out their nineties in some middle American suburb somewhere.
“My grandparents’ brothers and sisters, their children, dogs, cats, the town goat. All of ’em, dragged out into the cold Lithuanian woods and shot dead.” Reed gestured to the bowl of the forest floor where his crew had taken up various positions of repose, as if this had been the exact spot where it happened. “Well,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe not the goat.”
“Why?” Chris said, only somewhat less confused than before.
“Why not the goat?”
“Why were they killed?”
“What’s the difference,” Reed asked sardonically, “between a pizza and a Jew?”
“Huh?”
“The pizza doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven.”
“That’s … that’s not funny, man.”
“Yeah, well, neither was Schindler’s List, ya know? Or that other one with that mincing Italian.”
“Life Is Beautiful,” Chris said dutifully, finally understanding. Krunk had gone through a thankfully brief concentration camp movie phase.
“Yeah,” Reed said.
A gust of wind pushed through, rattling the trees.
“This is my Holocaust movie,” Reed announced.
“This is a Holocaust movie?”
“Don’t tell New Line,” he mock-whispered. “They think it’s an action flick.” Reed swiped at his sweaty brow with the heavy fabric of his jacket. “Anyway, when all is said and done, this one is for the Razakovskys of Lithuania, aka the Reeds of Pittsburgh, god only knows how we ended up there.” Reed looked skyward. “Of course,” he went on, “it won’t matter to my mother. As far as she’s concerned, it’s all over, baby blue.”
“What is?”
“The line,” Reed said jovially. “The Raza-Reeds. Barring extremely unlikely unforeseen circumstances, especially since the vasectomy, the line dies with me.”
“But don’t you have —?”
“The kids don’t count, I’m sorry to say. Beth was Jewish and we had Bobby, but he’s a boy, and he’s gay, so that’s no good. Then I married Zara the Ethiopian supermodel princess, but she was the wrong kind of Ethiopian, no airlift to the holy land for her; we had us a couple of girls, but, well, as far as my mother is concerned, black Princess Zara couldn’t make Jews no matter what, so that’s it,” Reed announced glumly.
In the sky above, a lone plane propelled past, rumbling low over the trees as if pulled down by the lakes it was designed to land on.
“Ugh,” Reed said. “I hate flying in those. Don’t you hate those?”
“Dunno,” Chris said breezily. “Haven’t tried it.”
Reed looked at him strangely.
“I mean, uh …” Chris felt acid surge in his stomach. He shrugged, trying to affect nonchalance.
“Well,” Reed boomed suddenly. “What are we waiting for, people?” He clapped his meaty hands.
THEY REACHED THE TOP an hour later, the crew gasping then groaning upon seeing that the plateau of the cliff Reed had forced them to climb flattened out into a forest floor dominated by tall, thick-limbed trees. The dense forest guarded another hillside, this one sweeping up into a ridge standing between them and anything that might be considered even remotely panoramic.
“All right,” Reed said, “no need to panic.” He consulted his map with furrowed brow. Chris scanned the forest, not particularly concerned about the fate of the excursion. Reed had invited him on it while making it clear that the journey was entirely optional — for the star. Curious, and with nothing else to do, Chris had tagged along, though he probably shouldn’t have. He had to stop talking to Reed. To anyone. They knew more about Thomson than he did. Thomson Holmes probably owned a float plane. He was probably in the goddamn thing right now.
