CUT TO JIM WALKING DOWN THE STREET. . so sunk in anxiety and despair that he barely notices a street festival of chanting pilgrims, snake charmers, sword swallowers, and acrobats. He passes a wooden platform where Kathakali dancers move through the rituals of an ancient myth with slow graceful gestures. One woman, her face divided into two colors, red and blue, laughs with one side of her face and cries with the other. He moves on, through screaming children throwing bags of water and urine. They surround him, taunting him, covering him with red dye, and drenching him with the awful fluid. He stands there helpless and enraged, unable to control himself. .
LATER, HIS CLOTHES STILL DRENCHED. . he finds himself before a cigarette stall on the corner of a busy thoroughfare. A small gray-haired man with most of his teeth missing sits on a rug at the rear of the stall sorting through a pile of handmade cigarettes. Jim stares at him, unable to approach. Several times he tries and the man waits expectantly, looking up at him. Jim glances at his watch, as if he has an appointment. Across the street pilgrims perform bathing rituals in a deep green pool in front of an ancient temple where women have spread out their laundry to dry on the stone steps. Monkeys chatter in the trees. A funeral procession passes, a child’s body lying on a board covered with garlands of fresh flowers. “Time is a cruel master,” the man says, but Jim can only nod. Finally he buys a pack of American cigarettes and leaves. .
13
AT THIS point, Wesley, sitting at a café on the beach at Mazatlán, stopped reading the typed transcript of Walker’s tape even though there were more than a few pages remaining. It was past noon and he was on his third margarita and he felt slightly dizzy and more than a little hung over. Walking toward him on the beach were Sidney, the second unit cameraman, and Harold, a young producer from London sporting a new Panama hat and a Hawaiian shirt who had flown in the previous night and whose mission Wesley had somehow forgotten. He was not happy to see them. He needed time for his own thoughts, for this sudden permission he seemed to have granted himself toward an interior dialogue, or failing that, at least a period of refuge from the gleeful and vicious publicity he had received since his walkout and subsequent firing two weeks ago. “Neti, neti,” he said aloud, realizing he knew nothing about Walker’s mind and precious little about his own.
“You certainly chose a bucolic spot for yourself, Mr. Hardin,” Harold said, maneuvering his bulk into a chair as he and Sidney sat down at the table.
He paused, trying to feel his way through the sullen atmosphere Wesley was projecting. The fact that he was in awe of the legendary director didn’t help. Wesley sat immobile, his face half hidden underneath a peasant’s straw hat, staring at the thick line of jungle where squads of green parrots kept up a raucous chatter. Inside the café the jukebox played Hank Williams to an empty room. After a lengthy silence, Harold tried again: “Your charming wife told me to tell you that she won’t be joining us for lunch. She pleads guilty to a shopping compulsion directed toward native rugs.”
Wesley said nothing, looking at Harold with a preoccupied frown until Harold was forced to look away. Sidney, on the other hand, didn’t mind Wesley’s mood, much as it seemed to match his own, and he waited until he had ordered a drink before he tried to bring the situation into some kind of focus.
“Harold might be able to come up with money to continue shooting. I filled him in this morning about the stuff we shot in Durango and those few scenes down here and the one with Evelyn on the fishing boat.”
“Of course I have to look at the footage,” Harold said. “But I’m thrilled with the whole concept. And I think a personal straight-from-the-guts exploration of a major crisis in a famous man’s life has broad popular appeal.”
“I was thinking just the opposite,” Wesley said.
“Indeed?” Harold said. “Sidney gave me the impression you were quite excited about the way things were going.”
“I don’t want to think about results, which means I don’t want to think about money, which means I don’t want to consider turning what are essentially private notes into a feature film. I started shooting out of rage, just wanting to shove it up the studio’s ass. I’m not interested in hustling my private life and I don’t want anyone else doing it either.”
“Then what am I doing here?” Harold asked.
“I don’t know,” Wesley said quietly. “And I don’t want to know.”
“Does that mean a wrap?” Sidney asked.