O’Connor looks closely at his watch. He’s very aware of his responsibility.
Hoskins puts the tube away, puts the other boxes and bottles away, and closes the doctor’s bag. Then he gets to his feet, dusts off the knees of his trousers, picks up the doctor’s bag, and says to O’Connor, “Remember, sir. Three minutes.”
“I remember,” O’Connor says.
Pine suddenly speaks, without altering his posture or expression or changing in any other way. In a deep sepulchral voice he says, “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a flying fuck.”
“Ah, yes,” Hoskins says, nodding in satisfaction. “The Gone with the Wind remake. We just recently completed that.”
“I know,” O’Connor says. “He told me.”
“More of it may surface,” Hoskins says, “but it should taper off quite soon.”
In that same deep sepulchral voice, still without shifting position or changing facial expression, the actor intones, “You want something from me, and you want it badly enough to show a lot of tit in those velvets.”
“Well,” Hoskins says, “until the next crisis.” And he leaves, heading back to the house again, carrying the doctor’s bag with him.
O’Connor, mindful of the three-minute deadline, looks at his watch.
“What time is it?”
Startled, O’Connor looks past his watch at the actor, and finds the man looking back at him, calm and relaxed and apparently in perfectly ordinary shape. O’Connor says, “Mr. Pine? Are you all right?”
“Of course, I’m all right,” Pine answers, his manner now surly, even snappish. “Who the hell are you?” he demands. “You better scram before I call Security.”
“I’m Michael O’Connor. We’ve been talking here.”
Pine’s face goes blank. In that deep sepulchral voice again, he says, “Rhett. Rhett Butler. And I don’t take shit from any man.”
Exasperated, trying to find some way to get Pine back on track, O’Connor says, “Did Dori Lunsford get the beach house? After the divorce?”
The actor frowns at him, uncomprehending, and slowly that expressive face changes, lightens up, becomes cheerful and welcoming again. “The interviewer!” Pine says, delighted to see him. “Where you been, Michael?”
O’Connor, becoming wise in the ways of Jack Pine’s mind, says, “Took a walk around, looked at the property.”
“Nice here, isn’t it?” Pine smiles around at his land, and O’Connor notices how he manages never to look directly at the swimming pool. Still smiling, the actor says, “No, it was Lorraine who got the beach house, finally, after a long fight. Dori would have gotten this place, only we didn’t actually have to get divorced.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.” The actor smiles broadly in remembered pleasure. “It was a real pleasant surprise. I got an annulment, not a divorce. Turns out, prenuptial consummations don’t count.”
“So this has been your home ever since.”
Pine looks around, looks left, looks right, smiles in comfortable ownership, never looks directly at the pool. “Yeah,” he says dreamily. “There’s no place like home.”
Dream Sequence
A heavenly chorus sings; hallelujah. Jack floats down the wide staircase, a dust mote among the dust motes, his fingertips gliding down the polished oak balustrade, his feet never touching the stairs. Shafts of sunlight bend around him, creating a personal monogrammed rainbow just for Jack Pine. Imagine!
Partway down the stairs, Jack meets sullen, grumpy old Buddy coming up, in loafers and chinos and a beautiful beige cashmere sweater that just eats up all the sun. “Hi, Buddy,” Jack sings, pirouetting on the stairs, the chorus turning his words into madrigals, the dust motes writing the music on the staffs of sunshafts. “Just get in, Buddy Buddy?”
“Looks that way,” grumbles Buddy, not in tune with the music or the day at all, and he stumps on up the stairs, barely even glancing in Jack’s direction.
Why can’t Buddy be happy? Jack is happy. Jack floats down a step or two, then stops to consider a sudden kind of revelation. Wafting about, gazing upward at Buddy’s bent receding back, Jack says, “Buddy? Isn’t that my sweater?”
“It was,” Buddy says, without pausing or looking back. As Jack watches, with tiny tendrils of distress creeping about his heart, Buddy pounds on up to the top of the stairs and disappears down the wide white hall.
“Sir?”
It is Hoskins’s voice, taking a solo above the chorus. Jack floats around to face down-flight, and there stands Hoskins, all in black, at the bottom step, his hand upon the newel post.
“Ah, Hoskins,” Jack breathes, grateful for the distraction that made him forget...
...something.
“Dr. Ovoid’s here, sir,” Hoskins announces.
Elation lifts Jack even farther into the air, inches and inches above the mundane wooden steps. “Goody!” he cries.
Hoskins lifts a surprisingly expressive hand from the newel post and gestures gracefully with it, as he says, “I put him in the east parlor.”
“Oh, yes! Oh, yes! The east parlor!” And Jack sails through the air, over Hoskins’s surprised and laughing head, sweeping away toward the east parlor.
Within the east parlor, waiting, looms Dr. Ovoid, large and round and sleek and buttery and well-satisfied, with a dead-white face and tiny hands and feet. The east parlor itself is a lovely room, full of flowers and morning sun and white wicker furniture; but at the moment Dr. Ovoid stands by a prettily curtained window, smiling as he gazes out upon the rose garden in rich and luxuriant flower. And behind him, on a long table, rests a rolled-up black silk bag a bit larger and much softer than a quart whiskey bottle.
The hall door swings open of its own accord, and in a moment Jack swirls in, surrounded by fairy garlands and cherubs trilling hosannahs. “Good morrrr-ning, doctor,” sings Jack, and in great good spirits he flies around the ceiling.
Dr. Ovoid turns and beams upon his patient, happy to see this happiness, happy to be appreciated, happy to be wanted. “Good morning, Jack,” he says, and rubs his tiny hands together, and paces to the long table.
While Jack eagerly watches, dancing in place, the doctor’s tiny fingers untie the silk ribbon holding the silk bag closed. Then he unrolls the bag down the length of the table, showing the coral-colored silk lining within. The silk bag is like a half-size sleeping bag, one foot wide and three feet long, and its interior is lined with compartments displaying bottles of pills, bottles of powders, boxes of capsules and ampules, packages of inhalers and suppositories, all sorts of wonderful things for good little boys and girls. “Living better chemically,” Jack says, rubbing his hands together, smiling down at the assortment.
Dr. Ovoid steps back and spreads his hands like a showman, displaying his wares. “Well, Jack,” he says. “And how do you want to feel today?”
Lude Continued
O’Connor watches Jack Pine’s dreamy eyes, dreamy smile. Will the man ever get down to it, get to the point? But the closer he comes to present time, of course, the harder it becomes to keep him moving. “There’s no place like home,” O’Connor says, repeating the actor’s last words in an effort to get him in motion again.
“Ohhhh, yes.” Those dreamy eyes find O’Connor’s eyes and gaze into them. “I’m safe here,” says that dreamy voice.
“The world’s left outside.”
“Yeeessss.” The eyes are filling with color, becoming less dreamy. “It’s very nice here, very restful,” and the voice gets stronger, the words faster, “after a hard day at the studio.” The voice is going up in pitch, the eyes are pinholes in a decaying face, the words are coming faster and faster: “I can warm my flank, create a cause by the crater of the Susanna sometimewhenthesoonsunsomesoonsunsooooooOOOOOO—!!”