The Lost Expert, page 22
WILLA
(looking up into the Lost Expert’s eyes)
Nobody took ’em. They got lost, is all. All by themselves, they gone lost.
THE LOST EXPERT
I —
WILLA
(dismissing him with a wave of
her needles)
Been waiting, finder man. Been waiting a long time.
THE LOST EXPERT
How do I find him? Where do I look?
WILLA
Follow the Brown.
THE LOST EXPERT
The Brown?
WILLA
(impatient)
The Brown! Past Broken Creek. He’ll be there. He’s always there.
INT. LOBBY OF APARTMENT BUILDING
The GROUP OF YOUNG MEN he saw earlier are just outside. They are wearing white hoods now, their eyes and lips shadowed. THE LOST EXPERT freezes, waiting without panic, as if already knowing what is going to happen. They see him and pile into the lobby.
PACK LEADER
Well, lookee who’s back! We recollect his face now, don’t we, boys? If it isn’t that Jew-lover!
The leader punches the Lost Expert in the stomach. He doubles over. The gang beats him. The Lost Expert is silent as the blows rain down.
Section 17
IT WAS DARK WHEN Chris was finally alone, finally able to slip out of his trailer. No one seemed to be around, but just in case Chris scuttled quickly from under the slide to behind the climbing wall. Streetlamp glare muted by the large maples and lindens cast nighttime shadow over the well-worn playground equipment. Chris edged along until he was a few feet from the chain-link fence that separated the park from the playing field of the Catholic primary school. Well, it had been a Catholic school until last year when changing demographics and declining religious affiliation finally caught up to the enrollment levels, resulting in the school’s closure, the students amalgamated with two other schools to achieve efficiencies of scale the church once enjoyed through sheer ubiquity. Despite his name, neither of his parents had ever been religious. Thinking about it, Chris realized that he didn’t even know if they believed in God. Did they? Could they have once? But, Tommy, look how sad they made you …
Chris leapt the waist-high fence and began trotting through the field, aware that in the dim streetlight he was in danger of falling into one of the holes dug by the small, yappy dogs that infested the fenced-in area on weekends and after work. As he ran, he felt the envelope of money Berinstain had given him pressing against his thigh. Two thousand dollars. Just like that. Spending money. Pocket change, for a guy like Thomson Holmes.
Having effected his escape, unseen and, more remarkably, uncontaminated by mini designer dog turds, Chris felt himself gain confidence in his planned defection. He was out. He had some money. He hadn’t done anything that — horrible. He was done. Done with all of it. Done with that man on the screen, that sad, horrible reflection. He’d drunk another three fingers of vodka back in his trailer while waiting for the coast to clear. He was done, he’d kept telling himself. It was over.
Once upon a time, a movie star disappeared. His parents got divorced. His dad remarried. He moved out on his own, went to college, dropped out of college. Chris had always thought he’d eventually outrun it, that sense that he’d failed something — though he wasn’t sure what. Put enough distance between yourself and the past and it should eventually just fade away, shouldn’t it? But now, now that he was a big success, a movie star, he saw how it really was. It was always there, whispering to him, stalking him. Did you tell them? Do they know? How sad you are?
Where’d you go, Little Scarface? Where was Thomson Holmes? And Alison? Shouldn’t he at least say goodbye? Goodbye to Alison?
KRUNK’S BASEMENT BACHELOR PAD was accessed through the back alley that ran parallel to the restaurants and shops fronting Spadina between Dundas and College. This was Toronto’s China-town: cheap restaurants with faded placards in their grimy windows promising a Three Course Lunch Special, the price crossed out and raised a dollar a time over the years. Chris and Krunk were regulars for the $4.99, the $5.99, and, more recently, the $6.99. Hot and sour soup, spring roll, General Tso’s chicken. He tried picturing it: Darlia raising a deep-fried chunk of battered chicken coated in thick red sweet and sour mystery sauce to her perfect pursed lips.
Chris veered into the alleyway, ill lit, trash strewn, just barely wide enough to admit a delivery van. He stepped quickly, familiar with the uniquely greasy cracked pavement. He and Krunk had a running joke about it, alternated between calling it “the tunnel of love,” “the fecund funnel,” or, most insensibly, “the Last Little Alley in Texas.” His loafers raised a slapping sound out of the porous concrete, the only thing out of place in this familiar scene until the Holmes Samsung startled him by vibrating in his pocket. Ignoring it, Chris quickened his pace.
The Krunk lair sat underneath Kwai-Soo Very Gourmet BBQ, whose trademark dish was barbecue pork on rice; according to Krunk, they went through fifteen pigs a night, last orders placed at 3:30 a.m., the restaurant finally closing at 4:00, around the same time his best friend usually stumbled home.
Chris slipped into the back door of the restaurant and was blasted, as usual, by greasy, steamy fumes laden with intermingled sauces — garlic, ginger, fermented black bean. Without pausing, he headed down the rear stairs. He’d made the same journey thousands of times before, could probably do it blindfolded, practically had done it blindfolded — the dim light bulb burnt out, the two of them drunkenly clutching at the banister as they half slid, half fell down the slippery flight of stairs, landing in a pile of cursing, sweaty joviality in front of the door to Krunk’s basement hideout.
He hesitated at the door. It wouldn’t be locked. It never was. Krunk claimed the restaurant and all within were protected by the North American tongs and a lock would be superfluous. In truth, Krunk had gotten tired of constantly misplacing his keys. Chris felt a surge of nervous anticipation. He’d tell him everything. Then he’d call Laurie. Make amends. Tell her everything — almost everything. He’d go see his mom. Stay for the weekend. Compliment her pot roast.
Hearing clattering dishes and muted voices, he pushed on through. Krunk in his basement burrow conducting his standard one-way conversation with his much-reviled CBC radio while microwaving some pre-departure repast.
“Hey?” Chris tried to call. “Krunkie! You home?” But his words had barely escaped from his tight throat before they were throttled by the familiar narrowing of the already narrow hallway. Chris stopped on the threshold, disoriented. The radio was on, but it was playing what sounded like big band, exuberant trumpets and trombones. And the smell wasn’t irradiated bacon. Something more refined was in the air, like the cooking of actual food, which his friend never did. The light flickered gently, dim and incandescent instead of the harsh bare fluorescent that usually illuminated Krunk’s setup. And the voices weren’t just Krunk talking to the radio. Two actual voices, Chris realized. A high laugh followed by a lower chuckle. Then it hit him. Krunk was with someone. He’d finally done it. Gotten a girl down to his crypt.
Chris tried to stop himself. But it was too late. He was already breaching the darkness, moving into the field of soft light — candles! — enveloping the couple on the couch. There were glasses of red wine and the remains of a spaghetti dinner on the sheet-covered milk crate coffee table. Chris, feeling his full height, the ceiling just about brushing the top of his increasingly Holmesian brush cut, looked down at the two people on the couch. Canoodling. A word his mother sometimes used, half-kidding, half-serious, as if any other term was too painful for her to muster. Noticing him, unlikely paramour Krunk jerked away from his companion.
Then the woman stood, her bare knees knocking the milk crate table and rattling the plates.
“Chris?”
It was Laurie. Red splotches bloomed on her pale, lightly freckled checks. She looked at him wide-eyed, then looked back at Krunk, who was white and slack-jawed on the couch.
“Chris …” Laurie said again.
A wave of repulsion crashed through him. He opened his mouth. To yell or laugh or throw up. Nothing came out.
“Chris? Are you okay?”
“Bud …” Krunk finally managed, his folksy voice as fake as the dust-covered plastic rubber tree next to the sofa, stolen from some movie set or other. Krunk wasn’t even looking at him, was, instead, stupidly pondering the sauce-spattered plates in front of him. Chris leaned in, off balance, thinking to slap the dunce off his best friend’s face.
“Chris?” Laurie pleaded.
The candles flickered, as if stirred by a sudden draft.
Chris whirled and ran.
“Chris!” Laurie cried.
He stumbled on the dark stairs, his hands catching his fall, palms smeared with decades of greasy filth.
HE DIDN’T STOP UNTIL he’d reached the literal bottom of the city. His soles ached. His thighs pulsed with heat. Breathing heavily, he climbed the rubble of rocks between the path and the water. He thought of the desert, the cliff he’d ascended and, apparently, dramatically descended.
Chris gazed out over the Great Lake. The dark water slapped restlessly at the concrete breaker wall as if mocking this human attempt at containment. Sweat, trapped between his T-shirt and the increasingly ragged purple sweater, made him feel soupy and ridiculous. Angrily, he wrestled with the clinging cashmere, teetering on the boulders as he pulled the sweater off. Clutching it in a fist, Chris ducked under the rusting guardrail. The moon came out, revealing brown, burbling, oil-streaked spume foaming against the break wall. Then clouds rolled in again, and everything returned to muted metal hues of grey. Without the faint moonlight, it felt like there was nothing between himself and the Great Lake. He could barely tell where the crumbling concrete of the container wall ended and the murky vastness of the water began. Leaning over, hanging on to the rusted railing with one hand, Chris flung the sweater skyward. He peered through the gloom. He couldn’t see past the end of his extended arm. It was as if the sweater just disappeared.
The Holmes phone rang. Then, right on cue, the flip phone.
One buzzed and vibrated, one let out a muted, sad bleat.
Cold wind swept up from the restless water, pushing through him and rapidly cooling him down.
Buzz buzz buzz. Bring bring bring.
A splash a few feet out. Chris squinted into the mist. What was there? Nothing you could see. Cold, dark water, ice-age deep; barnacled shipwrecks, remnants of the great era of schooners and steamers; drums of industrial waste, their rusted barrels slowly leaking centuries of progress across the lakebed; bodies, Chris suddenly thought — bodies drifting along the bottom, mouths agape, eyes pecked out, mouths stuffed with stones. Did you tell them? Do they know?
Buzz buzz buzz. Bring bring bring.
The phones began anew. Which one held the answer? One. One quest, one ring, one villain, one girl. One right decision. One hero. One last chance.
Bring bring bring. Buzz buzz buzz.
“Hello?”
“Is that you, son?”
A tinny voice sounding farther away than the caller really was.
“Chris, are you there? Son?”
Not who he’d expected — Laurie or Krunk, the two of them feigning worry and taking turns frantically dialling and redialling.
“Yeah, Dad, I’m here.”
The last time he’d spoken to his father had been a perfunctory call after his birthday to thank him for the generic holiday card stuffed with a single red fifty, five months ago.
“Dad? I’m here. Hold on a second.”
He sat down on the thin strip of concrete, dangling his hot, quivering legs over the restless lake.
“Can you hear me, Chris? It’s a bit noisy. Where are you?”
“I’m in the city.”
“Oh. You’re okay, then?”
“Sure, Dad.”
“Your mother is worried about you.”
“Mom?”
“She asked me to call you. Said she hadn’t been able to get hold of you. And that you’d broken up with your girlfriend?”
“Mom asked you to call?”
“She says you haven’t been answering your phone.”
“I’ve just been really busy, Dad.”
“Your mother mentioned something about a new job? In film?”
“Yes. I’ve been working really long hours.”
“Good. Good. What’s the gig? I suppose you’re just doing the grunt work? Any chance of upward mobility?”
Upward mobility?
“Uh, yeah, Dad. Lots. Loads.”
“That’s good to hear, son.”
There was a pause. The wind picked up. Chris realized he was cold now, pockmarked with goosebumps.
“And your girlfriend, what was her name again?”
“Laurie.”
“Right. Yes. Laurie. Are you guys —?”
He’d never meet her, Chris thought.
“Chris, you still there?”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I have a few days off. I was thinking maybe I could come visit?”
“Sure. Sure thing, son. When were you thinking of coming?”
“Tomorrow? I could catch the Greyhound in the morning.”
“Tomorrow? I’ll have to just … Let me just check with Susan, get back to you on that.”
“Okay.”
“It’s just, you know how Susan his.” His dad laughed nervously. “You know how Susan is about surprises.”
“You know what? Forget it. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. It’s too short notice.”
“Why don’t you go see your mother? She’s worried about you. And then we’ll schedule a proper time for a visit. Next month? We could take a drive, see the fall colours?”
“Okay, Dad. That sounds good.”
The fall colours, Chris thought. In November.
Another awkward pause. Chris swung his feet. His loafers dangled from his toes.
“Well, it’s getting late. You sure you’re all right?”
“Talk to you later, Dad.”
“Sounds good.”
Chris swallowed heavily. He hadn’t cried since his grandfather’s death. That’s how it was, he thought. It wasn’t anything new. That’s how it had always been. Christopher Hutchins had been replaced a long time ago. His father, packing his bags in the middle of the night. His mother, pill vials spilling out of her handbag. Or else, like Thomson Holmes, he’d been just plain disappeared.
But he was still here. Still here, starring in a movie. A Bryant Reed movie, Krunk. Remember him? Pioneering filmmaker who shattered the Hollywood studio system?
You get something too, Chris told himself. You get more than something. You get more than they can ever imagine.
Buzz buzz buzz.
Phone number two.
It was Alison.
“Thomson! What’s going on? Where are you?”
Script 16
INT. THE LOST EXPERT’S OFFICE — MIDNIGHT
THE LOST EXPERT sits on the faded couch. ESTHER dabs at a cut on his cheek.
ESTHER
Does that hurt?
THE LOST EXPERT
No.
ESTHER
It’s very deep.
THE LOST EXPERT
I’ll be fine.
ESTHER
You need a doctor.
The Lost Expert twists away from Esther’s ministrations.
THE LOST EXPERT
Esther, what are you doing here?
ESTHER
The rabbi sent me.
THE LOST EXPERT
Why?
ESTHER
(sarcastic)
Why?
THE LOST EXPERT
You shouldn’t be here. You should go.
ESTHER
Go? Where should I go?
THE LOST EXPERT
(exasperated)
Home! It isn’t safe!
ESTHER
Yes, it’s safe at home.
The phone starts to ring. Esther answers it.
ESTHER
The Lost Expert’s office. How may
I help you?
Esther takes notes.
ESTHER (CONT’D)
(reassuring)
Yes, that’s right. We’ll be back in touch shortly. And don’t worry. I’m sure we can help.
Esther hangs up the phone.
THE LOST EXPERT
(not unkindly)
You shouldn’t say that.
ESTHER
Say what?
THE LOST EXPERT
That we can help them.
ESTHER
A missing couple. Young. Just married.
THE LOST EXPERT
I’m not a miracle worker, Esther. I’m not one of your angels. I can’t always make things better.
ESTHER
The rabbi says nobody should do anything. We should all just be. Be with Hashem.
The Lost Expert climbs to his feet with a grimace.
THE LOST EXPERT
He’s an old man, Esther.
ESTHER
You think I don’t know that?
THE LOST EXPERT
Esther. You don’t know what it’s like out there.
ESTHER
(extending the message slip to him)
So show me.
INT. SMALL, RAMSHACKLE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CITY — LATE NIGHT ESTHER and THE LOST EXPERT are in an uninviting, unfinished basement room entirely dominated by a large, ornate four-poster bed. They are accompanied by a grim-looking couple, the woman, PATRICIA, frail-looking, older than her years, the man, MARTIN, muscular, sturdy, his face lined with deep grooves.
PATRICIA
We’re doing our best for them. They just got married last year. But things aren’t so good right now. Emma was in secretary school till Ricky got laid off. He was working as a cleaner downtown. Martin. (looking at her husband) They cut his pay at the factory.
