B008J4PNHE EBOK (59 page)

A hand touched Sam’s elbow, and Dr. Jenks asked if they might have a word in the hall.

Although the enormous coincidence—that Peter Jenks’s psychiatrist father should be, along with treating Sandra, already engaged as Brooks Hartwig, Jr.’s, therapist—overwhelmed the better part of the case history in Sam’s mind, he was able to catch and hold a few of the major details.

Brooks had never been particularly adept in a social sense. When he was a boy, his fascinations had an eerie trend. The seven- and eight-year-old Brooks did things like ask other children to go to sleep so he could watch them, and approach strangers and offer them dollar bills if they would allow him to peruse their car glove compartments; he had a horror of empty playground swings that he refused to explain; when he was eleven, Brooks watched
E.T.
every day for six months, and kept the videotape under his pillow, and once threatened to kill a housemaid who attempted to dust it. Somewhere around this time, there was an
afternoon lightning storm, and preadolescent Brooks, at a window of the Hartwig family estate, witnessed a bolt of lightning strike a gardener. The man’s hair exploded into flame, his clothes burned off, and he went naked and screaming into a hedgerow. Though the gardener lived and recovered, this was understandably a traumatic, affecting experience for Brooks. It was then, Dr. Jenks had learned, that the invisible film crew manifested.

“My theory is that the documentary crew is a coping mechanism, a convenient explanation for everything bad that happens to Brooks,” said Dr. Jenks. From inside his coat, the doctor had produced a ballpoint pen and clicked the button at irregular intervals.

In college, the film medium perhaps initially allowed Brooks to exorcise some of his torment, but his work on
Who We Are
had been too stressful. He’d become a danger to himself and to others. It was only with years of therapy, experimentation with different drugs and dosages, and lots of peace and quiet that they had managed to bring Brooks into some kind of balance.

Sam found himself thinking of
Psycho,
of the half-assed epilogue where the shrink appears to explain that Norman and his mother were the same person. He had a feeling from Dr. Jenks’s little smile that the man was thinking of the same reference point, or of something similar—maybe an episode of
Scooby-Doo
where a particularly dastardly villain was unmasked—and relishing the chance to be the one who explained the mystery. Sam felt irritated on Brooks’s behalf. If anyone deserved a chance at the glory of reenacting a classic movie moment, of being allowed to pretend that his own life rose to the level of cinema, it wasn’t Dr. Jenks or even Sam—it was Brooks. He was the one who had put up with the anxiety of living inside a continuous production for over fifteen or so years. If there was a purer notion of hell than that—of being trapped in a film shoot that never ended—Sam didn’t want to know it.

“Can you not do that?” Sam pointed at the doctor’s pen hand.

“Oh, sorry,” said Dr. Jenks, as if he had just woken up. He stopped clicking the pen and stuck it back in his pocket.

“You know Brooks was hanging around outside my apartment building with a sword?” asked Sam.

The doctor shook his head. “I didn’t know that, though I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. There was a mix-up with his medication, and
Brooks skipped the reservation for a few months. We only got him back because he was viciously attacked.” Dr. Jenks lowered his voice. “A mugger crushed his left testicle.”

“Ouch,” said Sam. He noticed a fascinating knot in the grain of the wood floor.

“People can be very callous. Only the other evening, one of my private patients—an elderly gentlemen, a widower, a man of letters—some hooligan left him lying in a puddle of feces.”

There were several interesting knots in the wood floor, some larger than others.

“But I can assure you that we’ve got Brooks settled down,” said the doctor. In fact, Dr. Jenks had made the (admittedly aggressive) move of attempting to advance the poor man’s treatment by bringing him along to the gathering in Westchester in hopes that Sam would meet with him. “I know it’s asking a great deal, but I assure you, Brooks is no danger. He’s given me full permission to tell you all of this, and I feel strongly that it would be of immeasurable therapeutic value for him if you’d consent to go out and have a friendly word with him.” The doctor nodded, ratifying his own thought process, before adding, “It might even have some small positive benefit for you, Mr. Dolan.”

 ■ ■ ■ 

Parked in his wheelchair by the circular flowerbed at the center of the driveway, swaddled in a gray blanket with a freshly shaved face, Brooks was like a pale spot at the opposite end of a tunnel. He lifted a thickly bandaged hand an inch or two as Sam approached.

“Hey, Brooks,” said Sam. The padding of his sneaker soles was the only noise. The sky was a deeper blue than before, and it was warmer.

The puffy figure in the wheelchair was basically a stranger to him. Otherwise, what had happened never could have happened, because Sam would have stopped him, and both their lives would have been changed unfathomably. Brooks had given Sam money. They had not had the same ideas about movies. At times Brooks had annoyed Sam, and at other times he had unnerved him. They used each other in different ways, and now, seeing Brooks again—diminished, hobbled, alone in the middle of the long driveway, on a day pass from a hospital where you weren’t allowed to have shoelaces—Sam thought it was fairly obvious who had gotten the better of the deal.

Sam stopped a foot or two from the wheelchair.

Brooks blinked. The hollows under his eyes were nearly black. He lifted an eyebrow and held it steady. “So . . . this is, like, a fall party? I’ve never been to one of those.”

“Uh-huh. Me either. Happy fall, Brooks.”

“Yeah. Yay, fall,” said Brooks.

“I’m sorry,” said Sam.

Brooks angled his head quizzically. “About what? I’m the one who stole Rick’s sword, right?”

“I meant about the movie,” said Sam. “For picking on you to get what I wanted. I should have treated you with more respect. I was a bastard. I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh. Whatever. Long time ago. We did what we had to.” The little man in the wheelchair waved his hand to shoo the apology away.

Sam decided to let Brooks’s use of the first-personal plural pass. If nothing else, it was proof of what he should have known all along: Brooks was a director in his own right, possessed of his own vision and his own fierce drive.

“It was just such a great sword. And sometimes I get afraid. But it was wrong. I needed to give it back.”

That was what Brooks had wanted. To give Sam the sword so he could return it. “I gave it to him.”

“Oh, good. Like, yay.” Brooks’s head bobbed down and up. The slackness of his features made Sam sad. The current that had run through him—twitching eyebrows, fluttering eyelids, leaping hands—had been tied off. His gestures were sluggish and half formed. He was like a toy whose batteries were nearly spent.

A battered forest-green compact turned in to the driveway and parked at the end of the line of cars.

“You hear about Costas?” asked Brooks.

“I did.”

“He was such a great satyr.”

There was no question about that, Sam admitted. Costas had been committed. He told Brooks that he’d always wondered how they’d hooked up.

“I saw him at the library one time, one of the viewing stations, you know? With the headphones? And I noticed he was crying very
quietly. This old guy in his maintenance uniform and his Santa beard. So I peeked around and I saw that he was watching
The Wizard of Oz,
the very end. Where Dorothy wakes up back home, in black and white. And I knew just how he felt.”

Brooks’s head drooped again. While he was speaking, his gaze had drifted from Sam’s to fall on the mulch of the flower bed so that he seemed to be addressing the ground. “Like, where did all the colors go?”

“Sure,” said Sam. He tried to imagine what it was like inside Brooks’s head, and the picture that came to him was from the previous night, of the shopping cart stranded in the middle of the huge parking lot, looking like the bones of something.

“So we became friends, and he was very supportive. He got it immediately. What it was about. Our movie, and he saw that it was missing that thing, that one thing, that brought it upward to the next level. And it must have been fate, because the guy was—you know—suited for the part.” Brooks grinned. “But satyrs, they’re the saddest, right? They’re the soul of the party and everything, but then what about after the party, after the storm or whatever, you know. No one cares who they are, really are. ‘Who we are’—like the title? And they, satyrs, they—” Brooks raised a hand and used it to push at the air above the armrest. A frown tightened his mouth. “I hate these fucking cameras.”

“It’s okay, Brooks,” said Sam. “Let me.” He ran his own hand through the bothersome space.

The man in the wheelchair sighed. His hand settled back on the armrest. “Costas loved movies, though. He said that in Greece, in the city where he grew up, it was really crowded, so they had outdoor movies. Like drive-ins but way better. They showed them in people’s backyards, against walls and under the stars. He said you could smell the flowers and everything, and the sea, and what the neighbors were cooking, and everything. Great, right?”

Brooks looked at Sam. His eyes were glassy and full. His nose was red.

Sam could picture it: the sweet summer air, the smell of butter warming in a pan, the stars above, the grass between his toes, the projector whirring, a window of light opening on the blank wall. “That sounds wonderful, Brooks.”

A car door slammed shut.

 ■ ■ ■ 

Bea, her pregnant stomach tenting the lower portion of her anorak, called hello to Sam. He pushed Brooks’s wheelchair over to meet her halfway. They hugged.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“My boyfriend is friends with the guy who owns the place.”

A realization lay just beyond Sam’s reach. He could hear it, though, snickering around like the tail of film at the end of a spinning reel.

“Hey. Nice face tattoo,” said Brooks.

Bea gave him a once-over and determined that the compliment was unironic. “Thanks.”

The three of them stood for a moment, nodding all around. “Should we go in?” she asked.

They started toward the house. The sun was high, glazing the gabled roof and the windows of the big house, and spilling gold across the pavement. Sam pushed the wheelchair and blinked. It was right around noon. “God, it’s so bright suddenly,” said Bea. “Is this what they mean by the magic hour?”

No, he said, that came later.

There’s unfortunately not space here to acknowledge all of the texts that informed this novel, but I want to make special mention here of two especially crucial ones: first, Bret Stern’s
How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000 *And Not Go to Jail
provided Sam with his lighting solution for shooting the rave; and second, Richard Shepard’s
I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale,
which in its focus on the “Wyoming” exchange between Al Pacino and John Cazale, and in its interviews with Sam Rockwell, Sidney Lumet, Carol Kane, Israel Horowitz, and Pacino, undoubtedly influenced Sam and Tess’s respective viewpoints on the scene.

The character of Booth Dolan is, in many ways, inspired by the great Orson Welles. David Thomson’s
Rosebud
and Peter Bogdanovich’s
This Is Orson Welles
were invaluable resources. Specifically, Thomson highlights the passage quoted from
A Touch of Evil,
and Bogdanovich’s heartbreaking story of watching
The Magnificent Ambersons
with Welles helped to inspire the moment when Sam discovers Booth, Mina, and Tom watching
Who We Are
. In general, both men’s books helped me get to know Orson Welles a little bit better, a providential introduction for any person who aspires to make-believe.

I was immensely lucky to get feedback on this manuscript from film industry professionals like Peter Askin, Scott Tuft, and Glenn Kenny. You guys are nice.

Tom Bissell was my first, and most frightening critic, and I adore him for it.

I can’t overstate the value of the input extended to me by my early readers: spiritual advisors Elizabeth Nelson Bracy and Timothy Bracy; Mr. Big Deal himself, Sean Doolittle; Timothy Schaffert, the sweetest person in Nebraska (which is saying something); the totally super David Yoo; Drew Ervin, who barely knew me, and was generous and enthusiastic when I badly needed for someone to be generous and enthusiastic; and Professor Nathan Hensley, who has put up with more of my foolishness than just about anyone save my wife and a few medical professionals. Sorry that Craft Services never showed up, gang.

Anne O’Neil Henry and Emily Bragg turned my prose into French. They are both excellent talkers.

My editor, Brant Rumble, is a beacon of good taste and calm. He’s also the man to speak to if you need a new title in a pinch, or information on the mid-nineties roster of the Braves. I’m proud to call him my friend.

Amy Williams has been my agent for years and tears. She’s the best.

I’m grateful to Nan Graham and Susan Moldow for believing in me and for believing in this book that has so many penises in it.

I have never met Beth Thomas, but she is one hell of a copyeditor, and I am tremendously grateful for her efforts.

The following individuals helped, commiserated, encouraged, listened while feigning interest, or otherwise assisted in the long and
generally agonizing process of this novel’s development, oftentimes without even knowing they were doing anything except being their usual terrific selves: Julie Barer, Frank Bergon, Holly Bergon, Jim Braffet, Theresa Braffet, Michael Cendejas, Norm Elrod, Joshua Ferris, Megan Forbes at The Museum of the Moving Image, Benjamin “Son of Swoop” Freeman, John Glynn, Matt Grebow, Lauren Grodstein, Elizabeth Kennedy, Jennifer Krazit, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Christina Baker Kline, Shane Leonard (leader in the fight against the scourge of handle-pulling), Lawrence Levi, Danielle Lurie, Bridget McCarthy, Kelly McCormick, John McNally, Kevin Newman, Stewart O’Nan, Daniel Pipski, Lynn Pleschette, Mark Poirier, Paul Russell, Brenda Shaughnessy, Daniel Silver, Scott Snyder, Amanda Spielman, Brittany Statlend, Peter Straub, Craig Teicher, Jimmyjack Toth, and all the people at Scribner who have been so kind to me.