The Lost Expert, page 31
A MAN with side curls and a beard and a large black hat enters the frame and stands, watching the girl. He is smiling happily, even though his clothes are dirty and torn and he is sickly and gaunt. One by one, more of the shtetl Jews enter the frame. All the Jews are filthy and ill. Nevertheless, they begin to cheer and clap as the girl swings. They start to dance, forming two circles around the girl, one of the men and the other of the women. The Jews hold hands and dance a traditional hora, their circles moving in concurrently opposite ovals as they sing joyfully.
JEWS
(singing at the top their lungs)
Oy vey, I want a banana! I want one now! Oy vey, I want a banana. When do I want one? I want one now!
The girl swings, her dark leggings cutting straight through the true blue of the sky.
Section 27
LEAVING REED BEHIND, CHRIS walked out of the lane, down a narrow sidewalk bordering a wide street. There were no other pedestrians. The traffic, moderately persistent, moved past in surges, leaving behind sudden silence, conflicting currents of hot, dry, exhausted air. Everything felt in motion even though Chris sensed himself seemingly frozen in place. It was like he was on one of those long, automated walkways he’d experienced for the first time at the airport in Toronto. He just stood there and held on. He didn’t walk, but he was still moving. He got there without taking a single step. He thought of the Lost Expert. How events conveyed him forward. When to step off? A rare yellow taxi passed. Chris waved at it haplessly. It drove on. Sunset and Vine. Santa Monica Boulevard. Beverly Hills. The city was a fiction of fragments, a trailer for no specific film playing and replaying in his mind.
The real thing!
At the corner of 14th and nowhere, he felt something hard jab against his spine.
“Get in.” A familiar voice.
Well, why not? It wasn’t a cab, but it was better than nothing.
Chris got in and closed his eyes.
MOTION, A BODY ROCKING gently from side to side. A body. His body. His lump of slumped flesh in the passenger seat of a car. Was it real? Or imagined? A movie: camera tracking the car through the wide-open night, getting closer, catching up. Tires revolving in perfect sequence across straight asphalt bisected by double yellow lines intermittently flaring under highway lights. What make of car? Something beat-up yet luxurious, stretched out and squashed down, its frame evoking a lost world of American luxury, violence once purposeful gone cramped and flailing.
And the driver?
Little Scarface in shirtsleeves and a fedora, looking like a Prohibition gangster on a Las Vegas working vacation. Little Scarface, wearing sunglasses despite the dark. Little Scarface, window down, crook of his bare elbow cutting into the breeze. Is he alone? No. He has an associate lurking in the backseat. A second, dependably mean, with a long Lon Chaney face, impassively creased.
Nouveau California noir. Chinatown meets I’m Still Here meets The Postman Always Rings Twice — twice, three times, he keeps ringing! Chris, just another Hollywood dupe, no different from every other drifter who stumbled into a diner and saw a pretty lady behind the counter. The oldest story in the oldest book. You get greedy. You want things.
The car bounced. Chris felt his brain thump against his skull. Pain radiated through him. The car hopped again, lurching over some desert pitfall, Chris’s body jerking around in spastic parody, a minstrel marionette, someone else pulling the strings.
A new scene: a change in the timbre of the darkness. Off the highway, driving along a rough track. Hills looming. Pale grey-green ghost pines drooping with heavy cones, lit by a big white moon. Seen from above, it would be beautiful.
Alison’s wry half-smile, the look she gave when she thought he was being funny-annoying and didn’t want to encourage him. When she put her head on his shoulder. The smell of her neck. Sweat tinged with mango-coconut shampoo.
“Hey! Hey! You fucks!” Chris punched the glove compartment. He was going to throw up. “Reed! You fucking prick, Reed!” Blood pounded against his temples. He kept punching. Sweat poured off him. “Hey! Hey!”
The car swerved, dropped into a ditch, then pulled out. Chris slammed forward. Vomit surged up his throat. He threw up on his chin, his neck, his chest. He gagged sour flat champagne and Reed’s Mexican concoction for gangsters and presidentes only.
He spit on the car floor, wiping the sides of his face against the sleeves of his linen jacket. The car slowed.
All this time, he’d focused on beginnings, on the once upon a time origin.
But what about the end? How did it end?
For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. Maybe they hadn’t shot it yet. Maybe they were shooting it right now? The German and Reed, somewhere in the foothills, tracking a clear night sky of abundant velvet sparkled with pearly stars. So many stars! Such beauty! Such opulent space! Far below, grains of sand shifted, just barely roiled by the faintest of winds. An animal skittered by — tiny tan pocket mouse, nervous, low to the ground, low on the food chain. Above, a hawk circled, its huge shadow looming.
It was silent in the great empty amphitheatre of the desert, waiting for the show to begin.
The car rolled to a stop.
Doors slammed opened and shut. Chris heard muttered words. He smelled the familiar bitter tang of cigarette exhale. Chris drew in eagerly. Acrid smoke: a meagre but nevertheless extant antidote to the awful reek of engine exhaust dregs and alcohol-laced bile. Memory is a taste and a smell and a need, a desire. The Lost Expert, still walking, still looking, still trudging through swamp and desert and ghetto. Not giving up. Never giving up.
They’d drive up the coast, Chris thought. They’d stop as they pleased, in San Francisco, in Santa Cruz, in Sausalito, in places he’d only heard about. On the way out of town, they’d drop in on gentle Jack Holmes, his tanned face a crow’s-foot maze of regrets.
Then they’d keep going: Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Alaska. They’d drive a convertible, a two-seater, red like the one Dustin Hoffman drove in The Graduate. “Hey! Hey, Alison!” he’d yell, summoning her, compelling her, arms in the air, leaning against the giant glass wall looming over La-La Land. “Alison!” Or they’d drive east, back to Vegas, the real Vegas, get hitched at an Elvis-themed chapel, then on across the South all the way to Florida, feet up on the dash, her small toes, nails painted pink, the wind and sun slowly turning her hair auburn.
More muttering. The crunch of footsteps. The clinking of keys. They were coming now.
Chris shivered. And then — he couldn’t help it — it just happened. Heat on his crotch. He wet himself.
Someone fumbling with the door latch.
Bullets bounding into the swamp. His mom silently watching his dad pack his things. I guess it’s just you and me now. Her brave, sad smile. The real thing.
The desert’s dark rolled over him, cool and expansive. Chris kept his eyes closed, willed his body limp.
“Fuggin’ puked himself.”
“Pissed himself, too.”
“Fuggin’ loser.”
“Big man.”
“Big action hero man.”
In shared disgust, they backed away. Chris opened his eyes, just a crack. A lighter flared, revealing faces pressed together, drawing on the flame then breathing out fumes tinged by shrinking fire. Little Scarface, pale, the pink slash on his face throbbing fresh. His second, the other guy, blank and laconic, exactly as Chris had imagined him. Their cigarette tips glowed. Again, Chris tasted smoke: bitter fog swirling over him and disappearing into the night. Ancient breeze stirring dormant minerals from when the deserts were oceans and the world teemed with infinite disaster.
Again, the crunch of steps.
They were coming back, bolstered, fortified, ready. They thought it was done. Nothing left to do but consign one superstar celebrity Thomson Holmes to the nigh world of dust and shadows. Another player brought down, coated in his own vomit, slicked in his own foul urine. Sordid appetites! Misplaced regret! The time for strutting over. Poor mad king! He should have died hereafter!
Ever so slowly, Chris worked a hand into the pocket of his Thomson Holmes chinos. It was still there. He could feel it.
“Fuggin’ reeks.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You get the legs. I’ll grab the arms.”
“Yeah.”
“You ready?”
“Uh-huh.”
“On three?”
“Yeah.”
“One. Two. ”
“Three!” Chris screamed, launching himself, slashing wildly.
Assistant Thug jerked back. Chris fell to the soft, cold sand. Level with the work boots of Little Scarface’s second, Chris stabbed his little knife at the man’s oversized foot, once, twice, three times.
“Hey! My boot!” Assistant Thug half-heartedly kicked at Chris. Chris lurched forward and tackled the man around the legs. Assistant Thug teetered, landing hard on top of Chris. Chris grunted air. The switchblade went flying into the desert night, a small glittering object among many such small glittering objects. Chris slithered out from under Assistant Thug, who lay motionless, stunned by the blunted jut of rock his head had bounced off. Chris, still gasping for air, climbed on top of the man and put his hands around the back of his neck. But he was too shaky and weak to squeeze. Chris panted and swallowed, tasting blood. Assistant Thug bucked, rolling Chris back into the dirt.
“That’s enough!”
Little Scarface fired, once, into the desert night. The sound was a sudden distance of orbiting echoes. Absurdly, Chris scanned the sky. Red Mars shimmered manically in a black sea of extinguished suns and satellite jetsam; planes passed in the lower spheres, their invisible plumes dispersing. A world, made and made up. Assistant Thug climbed to his feet and staggered off to the car, cursing. “Da fuck!”
“That’s enough,” Little Scarface said again. “Get up.”
Chris stood unsteadily, facing his adversary. He struggled to swallow, still trying to wet his throat and catch his breath. Sweat in his eyes beaded his vision. The heavy pistol, wavering. Or pointing? The night a heavy blanket.
“That’s enough,” Little Scarface said for a third time.
“No,” Chris gasped. “Wait.”
He shimmied a hand into his pants pocket.
“Don’t!” Little Scarface warned.
Chris grimaced in anticipation. “Wait. It’s not a — Just let me —”
“The gun doesn’t have to go off,” he heard Krunk ramble. “Why the fuck do they think it always has to go off?”
“I’m not who you think I am,” Chris said, finally getting the words out.
“What are you talking about?” Little Scarface’s eyes flickered to the dark square sitting in the proffered palm of Hollywood’s biggest star.
Krunk hated the saying. “Chekov shmekov,” he spat in mock disgust. But it does, Chris thought. One way or another.
“Go ahead. Have a look. After, you can shoot me or —” Chris tossed his wallet. It bounced on the sand and rolled to a stop in front of Little Scarface’s snakeskin cowboy boots. Little Scarface looked down at the battered wallet dubiously. He nudged at it gingerly with his cowboy boot, as if expecting it to explode.
Chris sat on the cold desert sand, luminescent under a slowly sinking moon. Little Scarface crouched five or so feet away. The gun, dull metallic black, lay on the sand between his knees.
“You’re saying you’re this guy?”
“Yeah.”
“So, they, uh, brought you in? To keep that movie going? Up in Canada?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Huh.” Little Scarface shook his head in defeated wonder. The wind had kicked up. Chris was soggy, foul in his own sorry stench. He shivered in the cold cross breeze. Little Scarface, ignoring him, squinted at what looked to Chris to be his Ontario health card and continued shaking his square head — disgusted, disbelieving, Chris couldn’t tell.
“So?” Chris crossed his arms, grabbed his elbows, and steeled himself. No more shaking. He was sick of it.
Little Scarface sprung up. He paced back and forth, his lips moving silently, the gun in his left hand, the wallet in his right. He stopped in front of Chris, looming in close. Chris studied him. Poor Little Scarface, his face stuck in a leer meant to disguise his disappointment.
“You’re all alone,” Chris said sadly. “Aren’t you?”
“Shut it,” Little Scarface muttered.
“There are no associates.”
“I said shut it!”
Little Scarface was a fake. They both were.
Scarface rounded on Chris, pointing the gun again, this time with more focussed attention. Chris stared into the barrel. It gleamed, a wet hole.
“So where is he, then?” Little Scarface demanded. “Where the fuck is he?”
“He’s gone,” Chris said calmly. “I don’t know where he is. Nobody does. He took as much of his money as he could get his hands on, and he disappeared. He’s an asshole. He’s a scared, lying, raping asshole.”
“Fuck!” Little Scarface screamed, the gun in his hand wavering wildly, barrel syncopating to the time of a shaking trigger finger.
“But I have an idea.” Chris faltered. Then he realized it was true. He really did have an idea. “It doesn’t matter now! I’m Thomson Holmes now! I live in his house. I have his phone. His passport. His bank accounts! I’m him. I’m Thomson Holmes now!”
“So what? So what?” Little Scarface’s bared yellow teeth and beady, bulging eyes.
“No, listen. Don’t you get it? It’s better this way. We’ll make a deal. Thomson Holmes is still worth a lot of money. He could still make millions. I’ll cut you in. How about twenty percent? I’ll give you twenty percent!”
“Twenty? Twenty percent?” The gun barrel wavering.
“Of everything! Everything he — I — make. There’s royalties. And new movies. And commercials. Everything! It’s a lot of money!”
“A lot of money,” Little Scarface repeated soberly. Chris nodded encouragingly. The Lost Expert, his wife dead, his son abducted, the ghetto Jews walled in and left to die like rats in a cage. Even for him, there was something next.
“So what’ll I do?” Little Scarface said miserably. It was a sudden change in the script. A new character. Who would he play?
“Security,” Chris said definitively. He was standing now. He stepped toward Little Scarface.
“Security?”
Chris flashed his brightest Thomson Holmes smile. “I’ll need a guy. C’mon. Put the gun away. We’ll shake on it.”
“Security,” Little Scarface muttered.
“Sure. You and your friend.”
“Thirty,” Little Scarface said, slipping the gun into the waist of his dress pants. “I want thirty percent.”
THEY DROVE SLOWLY OUT of the desert. Assistant Thug was at the wheel, only slightly confused by the new plan. Little Scarface sat in the passenger seat, and Chris rode in the back. All the windows were down, and the fresh air of dawn scoured the car’s reek of vomit and piss and man sweat. The cool air kept Chris awake and upright, but just barely.
“So where we goin’?” Sidekick asked.
Little Scarface turned to Chris. “Where to, boss?” He flashed his trademark malevolent grin.
Chris gazed through the window. They were on a small arterial road on the desert’s fringes. They passed an abandoned gas station. Heaps of garbage. An old school bus stripped of its bits. They passed a rundown shack and a globular cluster of three derelict trailers arranged around a firepit, barely smouldering. People scratching out a life on the edge of nowhere. The world was full of those liminal spaces, sparsely, unwillingly occupied. Underpasses and ghettoes.
Where to? Everywhere he’d been over the last months had been one of those places where nobody willingly lived. Swamps, deserts, and casinos. Ghettos and insane asylums. Abandoned summer camps, boggy forests waiting to be clear-cut. For most people, these weren’t real places. They could only be imagined. They were scenes from the movies. When the lights come up, the theatre empties. Everyone goes home, taking nothing with them but their greasy bag of unfinished popcorn.
Where to?
He was tired.
He was so incredibly tired.
“Santa Barbara.”
“Santa Barbara?” Little Scarface was suddenly suspicious. “What’s in Santa Barbara?”
“My dad,” Chris said.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Emily Schultz for feedback and edits on an early draft of this book. Thank you to Sam Hiyate for enthusiasm and support. Thank you to Marc Côté for exemplary edits and fortitude. Thank you to my family for getting me through hard times — without them I would never have finished this book. And thank you to Rachel Greenbaum, my North Star.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge the sacred land on which Cormorant Books operates. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Anishinaabe and allied nations to peaceably share and steward the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.
