Dr. Filth sat across the table, nose almost touching the paper, frantically scribbling our new scene into my notebook. Every time I shifted, the rickety table would lean, and Filth would have to lurch after his drink as the pint glass tried to throw itself over the table’s edge. Filth would look up viciously, sip his drink, and then struggle to find his lost place in the narrative.
As I grip my glass tightly, I allow my eyes to drift absently past him. I watch the new bartender hurry about, busying herself with the other regulars. At the end of the bar, closest to us is Scott, fresh out of rehab, drinking heavily to keep his mind off heroin. Sitting two or three seats past him is the youngish-looking man, hardly older than Dr. Filth and me, with a mullet haircut and moustache, looking a little like Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, clad in a yellow T-shirt with a twin lightning bolt mark of the SS. Down at the other end, away from everyone else is a lanky, grizzled old coot with a collection of empty bar stools on either side. Whenever the juke box kicks to life, the old bastard cranes his bald head and caterwauls mournfully, rapping his knuckles on the oak bar.
“You know, Rubin, you’re an alcoholic,” Dr. Filth says, dragging my mind back to the table. He’s looking up at me, still hunched over the table, his neck bent way back so he can see me, his big, bearded chin nearly resting on the notebook. I look down at my glass, which once held a double rum and coke, but now just ice. He has a smug grin on his face. “Know how I know?”
My eyes are drifting along to the wall to our right, from the cigarette machine in the corner, past the door into the two bathrooms to the video poker machine, the bright, flashing juke box next to it, off to the front of the bar, where the front door has been propped open to let in the cool spring air. I give him a passing glance with a shrug, trying my hardest to look uninterested in the subject. “How?” I grunt.
“Because I am,” he answers, pushing forth his pint glass of ginger ale and whiskey. “And you finished your drink before I was half done with mine.”
I raise my eyebrows and lick my teeth beneath my lips. “The more time you spend talking about it, the less time you spend drinking it,” I grumble. “Hurry up and finish that, it’s your turn to buy the first pitcher.” I pull the notebook away from him and spin it to face me. “I should be writing this,” I say, mostly to myself. I look at him over the rim of my glasses. “You have the worst handwriting I’ve ever seen. Plus, I can drink and write at the same time.”
His fingers knit behind his head. “There’s a talent there to be proud of.”
I do a mock cheers with my empty glass. “What can I say? I’m a professional.”
“I guess you have to be a professional at something,” he mumbles, pulling the notebook out of my hands, going back to writing.
I stare down at the empty pint glass in my hand, horrified at the thought of buying the first pitcher two nights in a row. “We should get in touch with some film students, so we don’t have to pay them,” I say, eyes not leaving the melting ice. “Get some college kids to do all the work, and we can use all our friends as actors.” I glance up to find him still not looking at me. “We’ll need any money we can get for the big opening sequence.”
He nods, still writing. “And we need that opening sequence, that’s how we sell the movie. We can do the rest with a couple desks and telephones. We can get those at the Salvation Army.”
“How very Ed Wood,” I say dryly. “Drink!”
He looks up at me, then to his glass. “Dude, it’s the magic of Hollywood!” He emphasizes his point with a sip of his drink.
“Yeah, but we’re not Hollywood, and neither is our movie.” I point to his glass. “Are you ever going to finish that, or are you just going to nurse it all night?”
“Calm down, I’m savoring.”
“Savoring,” I moan. “You make me go back to your house so you can smoke pot, but when I’m ready to get more to drink, you’re savoring.” I shake my head. “It’s whiskey, what is there to savor?”
“Easy, easy,” he says, lifting his glass but not drinking. “Don’t you think it’s time to get a handle on this little problem of yours?”
“Handle?” I ask nonchalantly. “I haven’t started drinking at nine in the morning in almost two years, and I haven’t blacked out in nearly four months. If that’s not a handle, I don’t know what is.” I turn and cast my ice under the cigarette machine, the only cleaning this floor ever gets. “Now finish your drink so we can get to the beer.”
He snorts. “Trying to drink yourself to death again?”
“If it’s good enough to kill Jack Kerouac, it’s good enough to kill me.”
“How poetic.”
I jam a finger down on the notebook. “We need a way to tie these scenes together.” I lean back in my booth.
He takes off his glasses, wipes them on his shirt and cocks an eye to the ceiling in thought. “We could have them all calling the same person, this crazy guy, the kind of customer that we dread. They are selling him things and turning off his cable, asking for surveys, and they turn off his phone at the end, which makes him freak out and go in with a gun.”
“I like it.”
He celebrates with a Herculean gulp of his drink, finishing it off.
Two short girls with dark hair come in and walk straight to the juke box. They look a little younger than us, probably college girls. They take no notice of us, going from the juke box to the bar as we do our best to discretely give them hungry, wolfish looks. The Rolling Stones “19th Nervous Breakdown” booms from the speakers behind the bar. Knuckles is immediately rapping his fists on the wood and singing a mournful wail in horrific time with the music.
Filth digs out his wallet and throws a five dollar bill on the table. “I’m buying, but you’re going to get it.” When he puts the wallet away, his hands come back with a cigarette and lighter, fluidly tapping the cigarette out and shoving it in his mouth.
“I’m likely to dump the beer in the old man’s lap,” I say, taking the bill.
“I don’t care what you do with it, but you’re buying the second pitcher,” he tells me through half his mouth as he cups his hands on the other side to light the cigarette.
“I’ll just make it look like an accident,” I tell him as I stand up. “Holly will give me another.”
“Not if you only leave a fifty-cent tip,” he says, grinning wickedly up at me. “You don’t get no love if you don’t leave a good tip.”
I walk past him, saying, “Then you are going up to get the next one, and you can leave the tip.”
I’m back minutes later with an intact pitcher of Moosehead. Dr. Filth casts his ice into the closet behind him and we fill up. “If we get a couple of reels shot, we can shop it around with that, try and get someone to fund the rest of it. We need a really good script and something to show we know what we’re doing.”
“But we don’t,” I attack.
“That’s not the point,” he defends. “We just have to sound like we know what we’re doing. Hell, they don’t even need to be reels we use, we can always reshoot them when we get someone to fund it.” He cocks an eye at me and snorts. “You think I can’t convince someone we know what we’re talking about? I’m the best bullshitter this side of the Mississippi.”
“True...” I say, trailing off in thought. “Well, the shopping around is all you,” I say. “I’m a philosopher, a poet, a writer...” I sip my drink. “...a drunk. Selling and marketing... that’s your college degree.”
“Just a lot of schmoozing and buying drinks. I bet I could get this thing on every screen in America.” He laughs, folding his hands prayer-like before him. “People are going to identify with this movie.” He downs most of his pint glass in one go. “They will be lining up to see it. Think of how many people out there working on the other end of a phone. It’s the standard-fare job for disaffected youth. Bill Collectors, insurance salesmen, telemarketers, they are all going to see this movie.” He finishes his glass and pours another, topping off mine when I push it across the table to him. “We will be saying on the screen what they want to say to the customers. We’ll have a cult following.”
“I’m hungry,” I say thoughtfully. “We should get some food, maybe some coffee.” I’m staring past him to the two girls seated along the counter across from the bar. They are looking marginally drunk, but still have no interest in us. Two guys sitting in the back of the bar, writing. They probably think we’re gay.
“You trying to skip out on the next pitcher?” He clutches his glass defensively between us. “It’s your turn after this one, don’t forget.”
I drink most of mine and top it off. “I know, I know. I wouldn’t forget.” I look down at the non existent watch on my wrist. “Come on, drink up. I want to get some food, and I have to work in the morning.” I pull the notebook away from him and slam it closed. “Plus, I don’t want to work on any more of this tonight. Let’s blow this joint before I get drunk enough to start hitting on those two,” I say, pointing to the girls at the bar.
Dr. Filth looks over at them. “Yeah, that would be very unpleasant for all involved.” He pushes my pen across the table and dumps the rest of the pitcher into our glasses. “Tomorrow, you’ve got the first one.”
Go to Chapter 5
Go to Chapter 5
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