The Lost Expert, page 21
“I just wanted to thank you. For what you said last time we … talked. You were right about this movie. It’s going to be some-thing special. There’s something that happens between us when we’re on set. It’s you, really. I’m just following your lead. We barely need to speak. It’s amazing. I mean, she loves him, doesn’t she? And she wants him to succeed. Desperately. More than anything else in the world.”
“She does,” Chris heard himself say. His words were husky and weighed down. “She loves him.”
“That’s the tragedy, isn’t it?” Darlia sighed.
Chris grimaced, like he’d tasted something sour.
Darlia snuggled closer to him. They sat there, neither one of them speaking. It was surprisingly easy to be with Darlia, existentially calming, like resigning yourself to being toyed with by a lioness. Chris felt her heat next to him.
“And,” Darlia continued, “I just wanted to say that I would never — I mean, all of that — It was so long ago. And I was — well … We were young, right? Anyway, when I was — you acted like a complete gentleman.” She trilled a laugh. “Imagine that! Thomson Holmes, gentleman.” She laughed again, her citrus scent now tinged bitter.
“People can change,” Chris said. “They can be better.”
Darlia raised her head from his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek.
“You’re sweet.”
Chris flushed from head to toe.
“Thomson,” Darlia said, her tone subtly toughening. “I wanted to ask you. I’ve been working on a project.” Again Darlia trilled, this time nervously. “A script, actually.” Darlia’s hands sud-denly fluttered in the air, finally unveiling the bound mound of paper. “I’ve been working on it on and off for years. Bill, my agent, he didn’t think it was a good idea. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? But after what you said to me, and seeing how you’ve changed, I decided to polish it up and move ahead. I don’t care what Bill says. I’m going to direct, too.”
“Oh yeah?” Chris murmured. He tried to stay impassive. She didn’t have the key to unlock The Lost Expert. Time was passing. Did you tell them yet? Chris rubbed his temples and pictured it: His best pal frying convenience store bacon for his breakfast while bad-mouthing the host of the drive-home radio show on the CBC. After the surprise return, they’d do the usual, head out to any number of possible destinations: a full night at the multiplex moving from theatre to theatre on a single ticket; an obscure basement screening of found seventies Super 8 footage; a projection of Yiddish silent movies in a North York synagogue; an evening of Indigenous queer experimental sci-fi at a sleek gallery. After that, there’d be bars that looked like diners and diners that looked like bars, there’d be alleys and dumpsters, his friend insisting on crouching in rotting muck with his Leica to get just the right shot of an abandoned bicycle stripped of everything but rusting gears decorated with two used condoms.
“They’re in their early thirties,” Darlia was saying now, talking slowly, articulating each word with her perfect diction. “And they come back to their old suburb, where they grew up. At first, I was thinking maybe Boston, because Bill says it’s a bigger market, but I decided to stay authentic and go with where I grew up, in the Seattle suburbs. So everyone is going to be very con-servative, stay-at-home moms, dads working in insurance and tech. Anyway, they meet again after not seeing each other for ten years, brought back to town when their third best friend from high school, Bethany, tries to kill herself. They come back to visit her in the hospital. I’ll play her, of course. While helping her recover, that’s when they realize that they’ve always, secretly, loved each other. Like, literally, loved each other. So it’s a gay love story, but there’s also a lot of other stuff going on. Like, it’s the eighties and everything, and everyone’s doing drugs and going crazy even though it’s supposed to be all buttoned-up and conservative. It’s Brokeback Mountain meets The Ice Storm meets The Big Chill.”
Krunk, Chris thought. Krunk would love this.
“Of course, I’m no Ang Lee,” Darlia said.
“And I’m no Jeff Goldblum,” Chris heard himself saying in a high-pitched voice, still desperately trying to quell a hysterical giggle.
Darlia twitched her perfect, freckled nose. “You’re much better looking,” she assured him. She put a hand on his knee.
He knew and didn’t know what was coming. Her hand, just above his knee now, hot through his jeans.
“Tommy, it’ll really help me if I can say that you’re attached to the project. You don’t have to commit right now. I want you to, but you should read it first. I know you’ll love it. Anyway, before this shoot I wouldn’t have ever imagined … But you’ve changed so much. More and more I’m seeing you as one of the friends. Bruce, probably.”
“Bruce?” Chris sputtered. It was all he could do now to con-tain himself. A hiccup squeezed past his constricted throat. The muscles in his thighs twitched. He shot up out of the love seat and busied himself pouring more vodka.
“He’s one of the friends,” Darlia went on, unperturbed. “His backstory is that he’s super-repressed, in the closet, engaged to be married. He works on Wall Street and considers himself a macho trader, but …”
Chris felt her sweet breath in his ear and startled, almost spilling. Darlia was suddenly beside him, talking intently in a near whisper.
“I don’t want to pressure you, especially now, in the middle of a shoot, believe me, I know it’s the last thing you need. But, well, I have a meeting next week with a producer, I’ll leave his name out of it for now, you know him, anyway, he’s coming into town for another meeting and I set something up with him, and I think it would really help if I could tell him that you were at least seriously considering it.”
“Sure,” Chris said, handing Darlia her refilled glass. She smiled a Cheshire cat grin. He’d do anything for her, get nothing back in return, and not care at all. And anyway, it was time. Time to go.
“Really?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Oh, Thomson.” Darlia exhaled his name like Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to JFK. “Thank you. It means so much to me.”
“To Bruce.” Chris saluted, somehow staying straight-faced.
Beaming, Darlia clinked his glass. They both swallowed their drinks. Darlia put her glass down and took a step back as if to consider the totality of Chris’s oversized persona.
“Are you taller now, Holmes?” she teased. She crinkled her pixie smile. “There’s just something so changed about you.”
“Knock knock, coming in,” a voice called, opening the door and stepping into the dimly lit trailer. This time, it really was Alison. “Oh! Sorry! I didn’t know you had company.”
Chris blushed, heat spreading over his face. Darlia stepped away from him.
“Darlia came over to tell me about a new project she’s —”
“Still in development, dear,” Darlia cut in. “Very much under wraps. Hush-hush. Anyway, I was just leaving.”
“Well, really sorry to interrupt that then!” Alison said vigorously. “But Thomson has an appointment with Reed in his trailer. He wants to go over tomorrow’s shoot with you and show you some footage, remember?”
“Right, yes, yes. I was just on my way.” Avoiding Alison’s gaze, Chris wiped at the beads of sweat on his upper lip. Darlia shifted closer to him. He felt her small, perfect hand curl around his forearm.
“This sounds interesting,” Darlia said, flashing her dangerous smile. “I think I’ll join you. I’m sure Reed won’t mind.”
“DARLIA,” REED BOOMED AS soon as the group stepped up into his beat-up makeshift office. He flashed a confused look at Alison. She shrugged. “What a wonderful surprise! Have a seat. Here. Just, let me … just move these … papers over here … And a drink! Let’s get you a drink.” He looked around the trailer for someone or something. “Can someone get Darlia a drink! A drink for Darlia!” Reed carried on, shouting and fawning over Chris’s co-star. Finally, they all settled — glasses in hand — around Reed’s long desk.
Alison got the lights. The trailer fell into the semi-dark of nighttime screen time. Chris, suddenly realizing what was about to happen, grabbed the arms of his chair tightly. Each night, he’d gotten into the habit of deleting the link leading to that day’s rushes. Just in case, he told himself. Just in case he woke up out of restless sleep and felt tempted.
If anyone asked what he thought so far, he’d just nod and smile vaguely. Up till now, it had worked. Somehow, it had worked. It was the same with the acting he kept getting praised for. His “method” was to say as little as possible while staying as still as possible. Less is more, Chris repeated. His new mantra. The less he knew — the less he saw — the better.
“Here we go!” Reed yelled, clapping his meaty hands together expectantly.
His giant centre monitor unhurriedly drifted through a series of scene-setting tableaus: grey skies; foreground factories bellowing smoke; a flock of harried seagulls gaining altitude. A panning shot: the sallow, hungry faces of the extras; the women in worn, loose dresses; the men in fraying shirtsleeves. Then back to the low sky hanging over the wharf’s industrial district.
Chris, entranced, forgot to be afraid.
A sudden change — the frame narrowing, the camera conveying singular purpose, near-manic urgency. Chris reacted with a muscular startle that almost tipped him out of his cheap office chair. He felt Alison and Darlia both casting sharp looks his way. Reed, talking, narrating, didn’t notice. Chris kept his eyes on the screen.
A man was walking urgently down the sidewalk past boarded-up tenements festooned with signs. Despite the swing of his arms and heavy, frantic steps, the man’s pace appeared to be deteriorating, as if muffled by the worn but not ragged working clothes he was wearing like a heavy blanket. Then, with the air of someone dazed by extra hours of preemptive, abrupt unemployment, the man — the Lost Expert, Chris finally allowed himself to think — stopped. He contemplated a particularly dense cluster of overlapping signs and posters for Allan’s Army, for crackdowns on foreigners and Jews, for the rebuilding of America. As the man stared, the camera slowly climbed up his chest. Chris steeled himself for the shock. It’ll be me, he thought.
But the cheeks were hollower. And the forehead appeared dramatically protruding, the eyes cast in permanent shadow. Had they altered his appearance somehow? Figured out some filter that somehow converted him into this long, lean loner?
The panic left Chris like a rush of air surging out of a punctured balloon. He deflated, slumping in his chair. It wasn’t him. It didn’t even look like him. It was some other Chris. Thomson Holmes Chris. The Lost Expert Chris. Thomson Holmes Lost Expert Chris. This man in dark Depression-era work clothes, this man squaring a broad jaw dotted with five o’clock shadow, this man darting his haunted gaze from poster to poster as if resolving to try and lose and try and lose and try and lose over and over again.
Reed was still talking, narrating the action or making notes for further edits, Chris couldn’t tell.
“If we could — Beautiful — Yes — Hold that — That stare! — A little longer — Wait for it — Wait for it … Now! Yes!”
Then he stopped talking.
“But Tommy,” Darlia said into the sudden, buzzing silence. She grabbed Chris’s hand in both of her smaller ones. “Just look at you. Look how sad they made you.”
Script 15
INT. — LOST EXPERT’S INNER OFFICE — MID-MORNING
THE LOST EXPERT unlocks the door to a threadbare office. On an empty, battered desk sits a flat, square package wrapped in plain brown paper. The phone rings, but the Lost Expert ignores it. He picks up the package and examines it curiously, then finally strips the paper off. He sees a record, white with swirls of red mixed into the vinyl like spilled blood: “(Good) God Gonna Come”, by Bessie Styles and the Beehives.
A note falls out of the package onto the battered wooden desk. The Lost Expert picks it up.
Scrawled in barely legible handwriting: “Secret Track — Ashberry — 1749 Gorham Crescent, apartment 543.”
The phone stops ringing. The silence, like the wake of a passing train, momentarily startles.
INT. LOST EXPERT’S INNER OFFICE, LATE MORNING
THE LOST EXPERT lies on his back listening to the record. His eyes are closed.
WOMAN (V.O.)
(singing-wailing)
It’s so delightful / this hunger I’m living / I’m hungry for living / fill me up if you can / here on my knees / lean in to the Lord / oh Lord fill me up / fill me up if you can / no one can!
CUT TO
The record, blood-red vinyl, spinning on the record player.
CUT TO
BEAOMAN in the desert, draining the water from the Lost Expert’s canteen onto the contorted face of the kohl-eyed duchess.
CUT TO
The Lost Expert’s MOTHER, face down in the swamp.
CUT TO
The RABBI, dressed as the devil.
CUT TO
JOEL MCCANN, riding the streetcar, grinning piggily.
CUT TO
Blood-red vinyl spinning.
CUT TO
The Lost Expert’s baby, red-faced and crying.
CUT TO
The disc spinning. Music (dissolving into moans, frenetic guitar, bass, horns, and drums, then incoherent screams).
WOMAN
No one can! If you can. Empty man! Be a man!
CUT TO
The Lost Expert abruptly shoots up to a sitting position. The song ends, but the record continues to spin, emitting a faint background hum. The phone rings in the outer room. Suddenly, there is the scratchy sound of an old woman crooning.
WOMAN (V.O.)
(singing, scratchy, as if recorded outside a long time ago)
Finder man, come and help / finder man, we’re-a-goin’ lost / find her man, if you think you can.
WOMAN (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(talking)
We all called him Meyer. Keep outta them woods, my mammy used to say. Meyer’ll get you. He’ll get yous for sure.
INTERVIEWER (V.O.)
(a question, inaudible)
WOMAN (V.O.)
Ain’t no Meyer, that’s what we said. Wese ain’t afraid of no Meyer.
INTERVIEWER (V.O.)
(statement, inaudible)
WOMAN (V.O.)
We used to [inaudible].
WOMAN (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(singing in her low, gravelly voice)
Finder man, where you at? / finder man, we’re-a-goin’ lost / finder man, you ever coming back?
WOMAN (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(talking)
But we ain’t never seen no finder man. (chuckling ruefully) Meyer, though, yeah, we seen him. Kids going missing. That’s the way it’s always been. Folks just going missing.
WOMAN (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(singing)
Finder man, we calling for you / finder man, we’re-a-goin’ lost / finder man, when you coming back?
EXT. A DECREPIT EIGHT-STOREY BROWNSTONE — EARLY EVENING
A sign out front: Broadview Manor. Vacancies. Scrawled hastily underneath: No Jews.
A GROUP OF MEN in their twenties are clustered outside; they wear dark suits and bowler hats, laughing loudly and drinking from their flasks. Some of them wear Allan’s Army buttons. They stop talking when THE LOST EXPERT approaches, tracking him menacingly with dead eyes. He moves through them without slowing his stride. Reflexively, they part and let him by.
INT. WILLA’S APARTMENT
THE LOST EXPERT is in the living room of a small apartment. The windows are covered by yellowed lace curtains. There is a single lamp with a red velvet shade barely illuminating WILLA, a tiny figure sitting in the centre of an old couch, also upholstered in red velvet. A partial patchwork of indeterminate knitting sits in the old woman’s lap along with needles and wool. The Lost Expert perches in a straight-backed chair facing the shrivelled figure. When Willa speaks, he immediately recognizes the scratched, gravelly voice from the “(Good) God Gonna Come” record.
WILLA
Finder man. Been waiting for you. Been waiting a long time.
The Lost Expert leans forward in his chair and stares intently at Willa.
THE LOST EXPERT
Tell me about him. Tell me about Meyer.
WILLA
(as if far away)
He took us.
THE LOST EXPERT
He took you? Where did he take you?
Willa abruptly picks up the knitting on her lap and starts to knit. The Lost Expert leans back into his chair and hooks a single large finger into the handle of the small mug on the card table beside him.
THE LOST EXPERT
(sipping)
This is good coffee.
WILLA
(as if to herself)
When he came, you could feel it. Here. (tapping her chest) Like a cold rain. Like a deee-luge.
THE LOST EXPERT
You saw him?
WILLA
(working her needles)
I ran. Lord almighty, how I ran.
THE LOST EXPERT
(pulling out the sketch of Beaoman)
This man? Is this who you saw?
Willa’s face remains impassive, but her tiny, wizened hands show her agitation as the needles click feverishly.
WILLA
(singing woefully)
Find the girls, finder man. Find the girls, if you think you can.
WILLA (CONT’D)
(speaking)
Wasn’t no finder, though. Only all us kids, gone lost.
THE LOST EXPERT
Was it this man? Was this the man who took them?
