“Let’s just say I’m not ready to lay the blame of ten thousand years of female abuse and oppression on Beelzebub.”
“Well, now,” Boetell says, the politeness of his voice somehow insulting, “whether you’re a believer or not is hardly the point here, is it? I think what we’re discussing tonight is manipulation. And as one with a Duke law degree and two years as a senior account executive at Ogilvy & Mather, I know just a little something about manipulation.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Reverend,” Beatty says, almost mimicking Boetell’s tone, “but as a woman who’s been manipulated half her life, I can’t help feel that Satan gets enough of a bad rap. And that lets the real criminals off the hook.”
“The real criminals?” Boetell says.
“The testosterone nazis,” Beatty says.
“We’re off track here,” Perry says. “We’re losing focus.”
“I’m sorry,” Beatty says, “but I’m not about to put my efforts into tearing down objectifiers like Schick if it means I have to toe some white-trash, Bible-thumping, patriarchal, reactionary, bullshit party line—”
“Young lady,” Boetell explodes, the voice high and slow and threatening as if he’s gathering strength for a real lambasting. But nothing follows and the room fills up with a silent tension until Candice says, “If we break down into internal squabbling, we can kiss this campaign goodbye.”
“Perry,” Meade says, “I’m really going to have to get running if I want to catch the mayor.”
“Why don’t we do this,” Candice says. “Why don’t we break up for dinner and meet back at my place around seven-thirty, eight o’clock. We’ll all be refreshed and we can work into the night. Try to build a head of steam. Perry and I would really like to show you some of the strategies we’ve put together this week.”
“I’m free,” Beatty says as if it were a challenge to Boetell.
“I cleared the whole evening,” the Reverend responds.
“I should be able to shake loose from Welby by eight,” Meade says. “Write down your address for me.”
“Okay, great,” Perry says. “Everyone go soak up some coffee. We’ll have a real study session. Seven-thirty we’ll meet back at Candice’s.”
There’s some throat clearing and mumbles and bodies rising from chairs. Sylvia jumps back into bed and turns her back to the door. She hears them pass by the bedroom and for some reason she stays perfectly still, practically holding her breath.
It takes a while for Perry to see them out, then the bedroom door whines open and he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. Sylvia rolls to face him, feigns like she had just started to doze. He brings a hand to her cheek and then her forehead.
“You feel warm,” he says.
“I’m freezing.”
“I think maybe you’re coming down with something.”
She gives a small nod.
“You should sleep,” he says.
“I guess so.”
“Can I bring you anything? Maybe you should have some soup first? Put something hot in your stomach.”
“No thanks,” she says. “I’m kind of queasy.”
He nods, then in a low voice he says, “I don’t know what’s been going on the past few days.”
“It’s been weird,” she says. “I’ve been feeling lousy. It’s me.”
He pulls the blankets up to her neck and says, “I don’t know. I’ve just been tense, you know. I’ve just been caught up with things at work. I’ve just wanted this partnership so bad.”
“We’ll, you got it,” she says, trying to sound upbeat and ill at the same time.
“What we need to do,” he says, “is pick out a weekend and get out of here. Head out to the Berkshires maybe. Just go to dinner and talk all this out. Maybe a long drive to Stockbridge. You know what I’m saying?”
“I’d love it.”
“Weil just clear some time. We’ll make it a three-day weekend. Leave on a Thursday night. Stay at that place you liked.”
“I think it’s a great idea,” she says.
“Soon as I get the ball rolling with the new clients.”
“Just let me know,” she says. “I’m always ready.”
“You think you can get out of the camera,” he says with a big smile, referring to the Snapshot Shack.
“I think I can manage.”
“I don’t want to fight anymore.”
She nods her agreement.
“Unfortunately,” he says, “I’ve got to work tonight. I might not get in till really late. So you just roll over and get some sleep. I’ll try not to wake you when I get in.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she says.
“We’ll work everything out, honey. I promise.”
He leans down and kisses her again on the forehead, then walks out of the room closing the door behind him. She lies still and listens to him gathering things together. She hears him mumbling, probably making a phone call. But she can’t hear what he’s saying. She hears the refrigerator open and close. She hears the toilet flush. After about five minutes, she hears him go out the back door.
18
Café Arco reminds Jakob of one of the little coffeehouses down on Rossmann Lane back home in Maisel, one of those tiny, low-ceilinged storefronts that functioned more as minuscule libraries than pastry shops. Originally built in the sixteenth century as dormitories for the alchemists of “Mad” King Reinhardt, the cafés were warm cells of communal solitude where one could step out of the rain and read the latest journals while snacking on a piece of palacinky and sipping any number of Slavic kavas.
So too, the Arco is a mysteriously calm port within the noise and glare of the Canal Zone. Carlo, the shift manager, is always indulgent when it comes to loitering over a single cup of coffee. And last month he accepted Jakob’s gift of a framed marquee poster for the 1947 Warner Brothers release Dark Passage and hung it on the café wall. Oddly though, the Arco is not a Bohemian enterprise but is operated by a Chilean named Sarmiento. No matter, more and more, Jakob is finding it a perfect place to work on the screenplay.
Tonight, he takes his usual corner table with his back to the door, orders a kakao and a potato dumpling that will take him a half hour to “fletcherize,” and opens the Little Girl Lost notebook. He removes his red editing pen from his jacket pocket and begins to read.
LONG SHOT — EXT. CINÉ DADA — NIGHT — LOWEST POSSIBLE ANGLE (shoot from the gutter)
The movie theatre, seen through swirls of mist, looks haunted. Half of its marquee bulbs are burned out, though we can still read the title of the last feature — The Lady from Shanghai. Vandalism and the elements have taken their toll on the building. (Is The Ballard available? If not, can we appropriate for a night? Talk to Hrabal). From an alleyway across the street, the Doomed Man appears. At the moment of his appearance, distant sirens are heard. (Dub Note: Use the low-pitch horns of the July Sweep).
TIGHT SHOT — FACE OF DOOMED MAN
panicked, strobed in repeating flashes of light and dark. Fade sirens slightly and bring up diseased-lung loop.
MED SHOT — SORTINI AVENUE
as the Doomed Man dashes across the street, the clip-clop of his feet on the pavement terribly loud. He runs into the alley adjoining Ciné Dada.
LONG SHOT — THE ALLEYWAY
as the Doomed Man climbs up a decayed, rickety, iron fire escape. At the top, he uses his elbow to break open a window. He climbs inside the movie theatre.
For three years, since he arrived in America, Jakob has used the world of film to shield himself from, at times to obliterate all together, the ugly questions of what his cousin has called real goddamn life.
Right now, the question Jakob wants to avoid is—If I have to, can I kill cousin Felix? The reason for the avoidance is that he hates both possible answers. If the response is Yes, then he’s become that thing he’s resisted from birth. A gangster rather than an artist. A wheezing mirror of Papa the mobster. A moral vacuum that knows only the creed of acquisition and power. And the joke would be that he’s become this creature by virtue of the resistance itself, as if in marshaling all his strength in opposition to the Family mold he somehow damaged any chance of immunity from an inherited brutality.