The Lost Expert, page 27
On screen, a close-up of a bizarrely outfitted baby-faced Thomson contorted in adolescent agony: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow — the last syllable of recorded time — Hey! I’m waalkin’ here! — Creeps in this petty pace — from day to day — Up yours, ya son-of-a-bitch! — And all our yesterdays — That actually ain’t a bad way to pick up insurance, ya know — have lighted fools — You talkin’ to me? — to dusty death.”
All paths, Chris thought, all paths to the same place. Hey! I’m waalkin’ here! For Krunk, movies were life. But Chris knew better. He’d seen the close-up: the German’s appraising eye narrowing. Reed’s needy drive, the way the conjured swamp pulsed around you — subaquatic mud tide, thick ooze slowly pulling you down. It wasn’t life. It was just another take.
Returning to the living room, Chris stood over the darkness of the hills, deep and wide, stretching on forever, barely molested by the lights below. There’s a world out there, he told himself. The thought was at least comforting: a night world that had nothing to do with him, with any of this — chirruping black crickets, felted field mice, stealthy, brown-plumed owls. In the morning, he’d call Berinstain. Little fucking Scarface! How had he gotten in? He’d fire the driver. He’d hire a new driver. He’d hire ten drivers. They’d never get him. How could they get him?
He went back to the bedroom. He threw himself on the bed and surveyed the square space. Like the entire house, it lacked distraction. No TV, no video games, no books. Not even a freaking deck of cards.
There had to be something. Something he could hold on to, something that would make it all real.
Getting up, he walked to the large, deep wardrobe. Shoving shirts and jackets aside, he leaned into its interior, redolent of lemon cleaning oil. He pushed his head and shoulders in as far as they could go, pressing his palms against the dark wood of the wardrobe’s back panel. He moved across, searching by touch. The wood creaked. His heart quickened. There, ever so faintly, an outlined gap under his smooth fingertips.
A hidden compartment. The raised wood slid to the side. Clumsily, Chris reached in, scraping his wrists. His fingers hit metal. Inside the compartment: a box. He yanked with all his strength, as if it might be bolted down. Encountering no resistance, he tumbled backward, ending up on his back on the cream beechwood floor, the box held above him in both hands, as if in triumph.
Eagerly, he brought the box over to the bed. It was shoebox-sized, fashioned of steel. It had a keyhole. Chris’s heart sank. Where was the key? The box was heavy, austere, and serious.
He tried the lid anyway. It popped open noiselessly.
Chris stared down, amazed. The only thing in the box was a single flat, cylindrical object. It fit neatly in Chris’s palm. He examined it. Both sides were silver. One side featured an adornment, the initials T.H. Chris brought the object close. He saw a slightly raised spot, like a button. He pressed it with his thumb. Nothing happened. He pressed again, pushing down harder with his index finger. A blade shot out. Chris yelped and dropped the whole contrivance on the bed. He laughed at himself nervously. Gingerly, he picked it up again. The blade was black as coal. He ran a cautious finger against its edge. The knife was razor sharp. A switchblade. He’d been hoping for something else entirely: postcards, crumpled receipts, snapshots, foreign change, wine corks, scribbled ideas. Who was Thomson Holmes?
Did you tell them? Did you tell them yet?
Little Scarface, pacing the pool deck.
This wasn’t what we agreed to.
The movies: an absence of people, the ghostly presence of their lingering. Reed and his one last great one, the Holocaust picture show. You can’t take it with you, Chris thought, near hysterical as he popped the blade of the knife out of its holder over and over again.
Script 20
EXT. THE CITY — AN AREA OF MODEST LOW-RISE APARTMENTS — EVENING TURNING TO NIGHT
THE LOST EXPERT limps through the city. His breathing is laboured. The gash on his shoulder is open, and blood oozes through the torn, stained shirt. He turns the corner of a darkened side street and staggers onto a main boulevard. YOUNG MEN wearing Allan’s Army shirts and buttons are everywhere, smashing storefront windows and spray-painting “AA” and Jewish stars on the doors of some of the businesses. A group of these men thud past The Lost Expert and run up the stairs of a three-storey walk-up. Limping and breathing hard, the Lost Expert follows the men up the stairs.
INT. BUILDING HALL AND NICELY APPOINTED APARTMENT
THUGS pound on an apartment door until it’s finally opened by a WOMAN IN HER FIFTIES in a bathrobe. The men push into the apartment, and the woman screams. They begin breaking dishes and knickknacks, yelling about dirty Jews living where they don’t belong. The HUSBAND runs in and tries to intervene. They push him around.
WOMAN
Leave him alone, leave him alone! We haven’t done anything.
THUGS
Go to the ghetto. All Jews in
the ghetto. Do you understand?
WOMAN
No, no, we aren’t Jews, you’re making a mistake, please leave us alone!
THUGS
(pushing and punching the man)
Jews get out! Jews get out!
MAN
(gasping from blows)
Stop. Stop. Please!
THE LOST EXPERT
Enough!
The thugs whirl around, surprised. THE LOST EXPERT looms in the doorway. Blood drips on the carpet. Several of the thugs lurch forward to attack, but their LEADER holds up his hand, and they stop.
THUG LEADER
C’mon, lets go.
THUG 1 helps himself to an apple out of a glass bowl, then sweeps the glass bowl to the floor, where it smashes. Thug 1 throws the apple to THUG 2, who catches it and bites into it greedily. Juice runs down his stubbled chin. Staring at the Lost Expert, he draws his finger across his throat. He spits apple in the direction of the couple.
THUG 2
Fucking Jew apple!
The thugs push past the Lost Expert and leave the apartment.
EXT. THE CITY — NIGHT
THE LOST EXPERT staggers through the city. He can hear shrieks and cries, shouts punctuated by the sound of breaking glass. As he works his way west, he passes GROUPS OF FRIGHTENED PEOPLE being herded east toward the ghetto. The Lost Expert mumbles to himself, looks away from the piteous shuffling steps. Gradually, he moves farther out of the city core. Here, the carnage dissipates, and the city quiets. By now, the Lost Expert can barely stay on his feet. He staggers onward.
INT. THE LOST EXPERT’S APARTMENT — NEAR DAWN
THE LOST EXPERT stands in the kitchen, where the food in the refrigerator has been thrown on the floor and all the jars of dry goods have been smashed. He walks into the living room, where his records are shattered and upholstered chairs have been slashed with a knife. He gets to the baby’s room, where he staggers to a stop. He eyes the empty crib, the sheets and blankets thrown to the floor, the mattress turned over. In the dark corner, the rocking chair creaks, and the Lost Expert spins around.
SARAH
(crying)
They took him.
THE LOST EXPERT
Who took him?
SARAH
(breaking down)
They took our baby!
THE LOST EXPERT
Sarah! Who? Who took him?
SARAH
Where were you?
THE LOST EXPERT
What happened? Sarah! Tell me
what happened!
Sarah jumps up and rushes at him, drumming ineffectually at his chest.
SARAH
Damn you. Goddamn you!
INT. THE LOST EXPERT’S OFFICE — EARLY MORNING
THE LOST EXPERT stands, staring at the front desk. It’s littered with messages in Esther’s handwriting. He picks several up, looks at them blankly, and lets them fall to the floor. The phone rings loudly. He lets the phone ring, then changes his mind and answers it.
THE LOST EXPERT
Hello?
MAN
Yes, hello? Are you the guy from the paper? They came and got my cousin. They said they were from the government. They said he was collaborating. I said, “Collaborating with who? Where are you taking him?” They said I better shut up or I was going to be next. What’s going on in this country? They can’t just take people away, can they? I don’t know where he is!
THE LOST EXPERT
I can’t help you.
MAN
Please! Please! I read about you! You can find him! I know you can!
THE LOST EXPERT
(hanging up)
I’m sorry.
Section 23
RACHEL ARRIVED ONE EVENING, out of the blue, texting that she was at the front gate and hoping to see him. Gorgeous, newly lean and tall — half a foot taller since finally taking the plunge and moving to L.A. They’d been texting on and off since the film shoot at the café, but hadn’t seen each other until now.
“Crikey!” Rachel said, opening and closing his cupboards. “Don’t you ever eat?”
“Are you hungry? We could order in,” Chris suggested.
“Nah, I’m okay.”
But to Chris, she looked starved. Her face, now divested of its previous baby fat vestiges, had gone angular. Cheekbones protruded from under the mane of her curly dirty-blond hair. Rachel opened a few more cupboards before finally finding the wine glasses. Chris popped the cork on a bottle of red and poured. In the pool house he’d found one of those temperature-controlled wine refrigerators. It was full of what looked to be wines of extremely expensive vintage. He’d been hesitant to touch them, but finally pulled out two bottles at random to mark Rachel’s visit.
With their wine, they adjourned to the living room.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Rachel quipped. She leaned toward him as she spoke, presenting him with a view down her loose top: black bra over a small chest.
“You’re my first visitor,” Chris replied.
“Really? I thought you’d lived here a long time.”
“Since I got back.”
Rachel laughed loudly.
“Anyway,” Chris said. “Here’s to L.A.”
They clinked glasses.
Rachel gulped, draining most of her wine. Chris refilled her glass. She drank again, then launched into a frenetic explanation of what she’d been up to since he’d met her at the movie shoot.
Her new Hollywood-based agent had encouraged her to move. She’d left Toronto. She was living with two other girls in Los Feliz. She’d already auditioned for three movies — two indies and one studio gross-out comedy — and a superhero TV show in which she was supposed to play the best friend of a young family doctor who used her telekinetic powers for good. Her agent said she was going to get a callback and was in consideration to play the lead in one of the indies.
“Exciting,” Chris interjected.
“You’re making fun of me,” Rachel pouted.
“No. I mean it.”
She was off again, expounding on the difference between Toronto and L.A. and how everyone here was taking her much more seriously. In Toronto, they thought the idea of trying to become a starring actress was weird, suspicious, somehow silly.
Chris nodded. He’d heard all this before, with far more force, Krunk’s malevolence for the Canadian film industry reaching its apotheosis when he’d proposed to create a short film consisting of scenes from every film Ryan Gosling had ever made, but with an animated Canadian flag plastered over his mouth. Armed with the concept, he’d applied for and received a five-thousand-dollar development grant. The money long since gone, he’d been claiming the project was in production ever since.
Rachel gulped her wine. She was on her third. Chris refilled. “Hey,” she said. “You trying to get me drunk?”
“No!” he protested, feeling his cheeks turn red.
Rachel giggled. She had a familiar air about her — she was nervous and confident at the same time in a way that Chris now recognized and understood — it was the way of beautiful people.
“It’s okay,” Rachel said, looking him in the eye. “It’s okay if you are.”
“So, uh,” Chris blurted, “what ever happened to that guy, the one you worked with? Who looked like me?”
“Oh, you mean Chris.” Rachel frowned, annoyed. “I don’t know. I guess he quit the café or something. I sent him a text telling him to come to this party I had, like kind of a goodbye party, but not really because that’s lame. Anyway, he didn’t come. He didn’t look that much like you. I mean, not really. Why are you asking about him?”
The sun had dropped behind the distant city now. The light in the room was an afterglow of encroaching shadow. The wine sat in their glasses, a heavy red, like mansion drapes.
“You know,” Rachel said, “Alison warned me about you.”
“I know. She told me.”
Rachel sipped, girding herself for something. “She was just looking out for me,” she went on hurriedly. “But she didn’t have to, right? I mean, you’re not like that.” Rachel wasn’t looking at him. Chris followed her gaze. The long slope down, a settling velvet gloaming. “You’re not,” she said, turning back to him but speaking so quietly he could barely hear her. “You’re not …” Her brown-green pupils, glowing and earnest.
Chris stood up and moved to the translucent wall looking over the Hollywood hills. Where was Thomson Holmes? Still out there? Doing it — the usual? He was. Chris felt it in the pit of his stomach. Little Scarface and Thomson Holmes. Twin dark moons circling his star. How could he explain it? To Rachel? To anyone? In the depth of the elongated gloom, it was hard to tell exactly where the glass wall ended and the long descent began.
He felt Rachel appear beside him. She took his hand.
“It’s true what they’re saying, right? That it wasn’t you? That it was doctored?”
I’ll release it. The video.
“You’ve seen it? The video?”
“Thomson, it’s all over the news. Everyone’s seen it.”
Chris managed a breath.
“Is it true? That it’s a fake?”
The usual? They set you up with the usual?
“Thomson?”
He didn’t answer.
“Jesus, Thomson.” Rachel let go of his hand.
“What? No! Rachel! Of course, it’s true! I had nothing to do with it!” Looking at her, he took her hand and held it to his chest. They both felt it, a beating heart.
Rachel exhaled audibly.
“I keep telling people. It’s not you. You’re not like that!” She pressed in against him. Her body was hot like a fever. She shivered dramatically. “Got a chill,” she said coquettishly, drunkenly. “Warm me up?”
“Rachel, no. You’re my friend.”
“I have friends.” She stepped back, playing with the bottom of her shirt, pulling it up, exposing her midriff, posing for him.
An erotic memory Chris felt would be burnt into the matter of his brain for all time.
“Can’t we just do it?” she asked hungrily.
“I don’t,” he croaked.
“You don’t?”
“I don’t have friends.”
Rachel considered him, her expression wavering. “Talk about ironic. The first straight guy who’s ever —” Rachel smiled wryly. “Fine, Mr. Thomson Holmes. I’ll be your fucking friend.”
Script 21
INT. BLACK BIRDS RECORDS — AFTERNOON
THE LOST EXPERT runs through the dark corridor and up the stairs. He barrels through the door into George Jason Paulson’s office. Reclined in the white leather office chair, his legs propped up on the cluttered desk, is JOEL MCCANN, belly protruding from his pants, scuffed leather shoes half off his feet. McCann is asleep, snoring sonorously, his face peaceful. There is a radio on the desk broadcasting news of cheering crowds and the rising wave of confidence spreading across the nation like a new dawn. The Lost Expert stares at McCann with disgust, then sweeps the sleeping man’s legs and the bulk of the mess off the desk. McCann blinks awake.
JOEL MCCANN
(unsurprised)
You.
THE LOST EXPERT
Where is he?
JOEL MCCANN
(smirking)
What are you going to do?
THE LOST EXPERT
(leaning into the desk and grabbing McCann by the lapels of his jacket)You think this is a joke?
JOEL MCCANN
I’d be careful, if I were you.
THE LOST EXPERT
(letting go of McCann)
What do you want from me?
JOEL MCCANN
You still don’t get it, do you? Beaoman, Meyer, Satan, the devil, all that nonsense. It’s not real. It doesn’t exist.
THE LOST EXPERT
What are you saying? What are you talking about? Where is he? What have you done with my son?
McCann leans over and turns up the radio. He motions for the Lost Expert to listen.
NEWSCASTER (V.O.)
In his first public appearance after winning the election, Allan announced he would immediately assume power, forgoing the customary transition leading up to inauguration in six months. He also ceremoniously removed the scarf he’s been using to obscure his face throughout the campaign. The audience gasped as his square jaw, crooked nose, blond hair, and steel blue eyes came into view.
