It clearly wasn’t the moment to ask questions about these things. The car duly was towed away, Josh Martin shrugged it off, didn’t refer to it again, and everybody carried on as normal and we got through the movie-making day.
That night, as ever, I went to the speedway to see the show. And there in the crowd, with Cadence hanging on his arm, was Josh Martin. This was a turn up for the books. He hadn’t gone back to his home in Los Angeles after the day’s shoot: the loss of his car would have created difficulties there, though surely not insuperable ones if he’d really been determined. So perhaps he simply wanted to stick around and be with his new sexual conquest. Or just possibly, I thought, he might finally have overcome some of his hostility towards Motorhead Phil and the automotive freak show, listened to what I’d said last night and decided to see what it was all about.
In a way it seemed to me unfair that after all the bile and anger he’d spat at the freak show he was able simply to pay his money at the gate and join the crowd like any other civilian. I thought he should have been forced to do penance first. Alas, life doesn’t work like that. He and Cadence sat some rows away from me, and I felt absolutely sure they didn’t want me to join them, but I kept half an eye on them. Josh Martin seemed distracted most of the time, and he certainly looked drunk, but when Leezza did her jumps he paid serious attention. On the last one he even had his cell phone out and he looked as though he was filming it. I thought that was just plain wrong.
Afterwards, as I was on my way to see Leezza as usual, I heard someone behind me shout, “Hey, college boy.” It was Motorhead Phil, of course, and he curled a big, overmuscled arm around me as he said, “We need your creative genius one more time, Ian.”
♦
Again I found myself at a hastily convened meeting of the core members of Motorhead Phil’s Famous Automotive Freak Show, as they gathered around Barry and his Beetle. It was much the same crowd as before, although there was now a bearded lady whom I didn’t recognise from the previous meeting. And once again they were all looking to me to provide some new, inspired idea. Once again I felt sure I was likely to disappoint them.
“Thing is,” said Motorhead Phil, “this has been going on long enough. Too long maybe. I know crowds. These people are getting impatient. I can’t keep ‘em waiting much longer. Sooner or later the old whore has to take her panties off and do the dirty. No disrespect, Leezza. I’m talking metaphorically, right?”
“Right,” said Leezza.
“I want the big one,” Motorhead Phil said. “I want to hit it and quit. I don’t want to make my whole career out of this. We’ve all got other things we want to do with our lives.”
I wondered what kind of second acts there were for people who’d been part of an automotive freak show, but I didn’t dare ask.
“We need a climax,” Leezza said, looking at me meaningfully, though I wasn’t sure of her meaning.
“We need a big finale, a big bang,” said Motorhead Phil.
Everyone stared at me.
“What? You mean Leezza’s Beetle has deliberately to crash?” I said.
“Wow,” said Motorhead Phil. “That’s brilliant. You’re very smart, Ian. I knew you were. Why couldn’t we think of that? A deliberate crash it is.”
“No, no,” I said. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“Well it’s what you said.”
“But…”
I knew it was no good saying, “But…”
“OK then,” said Motorhead Phil. “So we’ll have a big final night, a whole day of festivities, a day when Leezza and her Beetle are absolutely guaranteed to come crashing down on Barry. We’ll start out with thirty Beetles in the line, then forty, then fifty, we’ll break the world record if we need to, and we’ll carry on, however many it takes, however long it takes, until she fails. You all right with that, Leezza? You all right with that, Barry?”
Leezza and Barry, to my dismay, said they were just fine with that.
“But…” I said again helplessly.
It wasn’t much of a protest, but it was the best I could do.
“You’re not telling me we can’t pack ‘em in for an event like that?” said Motorhead Phil.
“No, I’m not telling you that,” I said.
“Right then. Next Sunday, it is.”
Twenty-Five
So the end was very definitely in sight, one of the ends anyway. Come next Sunday night something would very definitely be over. Death was not an absolute certainty, I told myself. Cars crashed all the time and people walked away from the wreckage, but in this case death seemed to be what everybody wanted. The crowd, Motorhead Phil, Barry, even Leezza, seemed to be in love with the idea, perhaps the reality, of motorised death. It appeared that nothing else would satisfy them.
I found myself unutterably depressed. I sat in my trailer and I tried to write more scenes for the goddamn movie, but that was now impossible. I was all written out. It happens to us all, and to far better writers than me. Somebody else would have to take over and finish the job. It seemed that just about anybody could: Josh Martin, Angelo, Cadence, somebody they dragged in off the street, or the actors could just make it up as they went along. It wouldn’t be any worse than what I was now capable of producing.
A couple of days passed. I stayed in my lair. Cadence came by occasionally at first, but then she stopped coming. She’d been given a new job on the movie. She was now Josh Martin’s unpaid personal assistant, which she seemed to think was a great step up for her, and it was definitely no skin off my nose. I really didn’t care any more. I tried calling Caroline in England but I kept getting her voicemail. It was probably just as well. I had nothing coherent to say to her or anybody else.
There were two untouched bottles of duty-free vodka in my luggage. I’d been saving them, complimenting myself on the restraint I’d shown by not downing them on my first two nights in Fontinella. Now I abandoned my restraint.
I stopped going to the speedway. It seemed redundant now. I knew that the big fateful crash couldn’t possibly come until Sunday. I’d be there for that all right, but until then I knew that Leez-za’s Beetle would be just fine, would continue to carve its neat parabolas through the thick air of Fontinella. I knew she would land safely, and Barry would survive, and it would all mean nothing. They were just marking time, going through the motions, spinning their wheels, waiting for the big final, fatal day.
♦
There was a brief, brisk rap on the trailer door, an unfamiliar knock, and when I opened up there was the actor playing Ronnie the dwarf. I realised with some shame that I still didn’t know his name.
“I’m outta here,” he said hoarsely.
I didn’t know what that meant. Had he been fired? Had he completed his scenes? Was he just walking off the picture?
“I’m walking off the picture,” he said.
It didn’t come as a huge surprise. It was more surprising that somebody or other hadn’t done it sooner.
It was far more surprising that he’d bothered coming to see me.
“Oh well, have a drink before you go,” I said, offering him a shot of the vodka.
“No,” he snarled. “I don’t want to drink with you. You’re the reason I’m outta here.”
I knew I had many failings but I didn’t think any of them was quite bad enough to make an actor walk off a movie, much less refuse a drink. Had my script-writing really been so terrible?