8

Sasha couldn't believe I was leaving. Both Wyatt and I had to repeatedly reassure her I'd be back in less than a week. What was I going to do in New York? Some business that had to be taken care of before I could start work on Midnight Kills. Why couldn't it wait till later? Because some of it had to do with filming; I needed to talk to some actors there because we wanted them in the film.

The day before I left, Wyatt and I made a list of the people in the cancer group who would fit what we were going to try and do with our scenes. I say scenes, because after seeing the rushes of the film we knew it needed at least two more to make any sense.

Midnight Kills was by no stretch of the imagination good. The idea was half interesting: Bloodstone comes to life this time as an evangelist who starts convincing crowds that his "philosophy" is not only valid but correct. Halfway through, we discover it isn't really Bloodstone, but. . . .

The plot had more twists and turns than a snake on fire. What Phil had done was substitute surprise and tricks for real story. Although you were constantly being electrified with new shocks or jolts or severed body parts, there wasn't no story. It was that simple. The first thing Wyatt said after we'd sat through the thing was, "It doesn't need a scene, it needs a proctologist!" I agreed, so we spent a hell of a long time working out what needed to be done.

Another problem was what to tell Sasha. We took the easiest and most dishonest way, which was to say we were simply fulfilling Phil's contract for him. Too much time and money had already been invested. Since there was so little left to film, why not do it right ourselves instead of letting some jerk at the studio ruin it?

Phil hadn't liked Sasha to look at his work until it was finished, so luckily she hadn't seen any of M.K. yet. What would she have said if she had? Agreed with our opinion that it would have been best for the film to be destroyed and forgotten?

"Is it any good, Weber?"

"No. But I think we can make it better."

"I'm not surprised. When he liked something he was doing, Phil never worked on anything else. After he wrote 'A Quarter Past You' and showed it to me, I knew everything was going down the tubes: our relationship, the movie, everything. Why would he want to write a story about that, Weber? Wasn't he ashamed, or at least embarrassed?"

Chewing a fingernail, Finky Linky said, "The last time I saw him in New York, he was way beyond being embarrassed. He didn't have both oars in the water, Sasha. Really pretty crazy. That's what Weber and I were saying about the movie – it's so scattered and confusing –"

"A crazy man's film?" She wanted us to say yes, Midnight Kills was a crazy man's film, and the Strayhorn who wrote it and a short story about their sex life and ended up with a gun in his mouth wasn't the same man we'd known and loved.

Wyatt said, "Before my father died a couple of years ago, he was so mean and impossible to be around that he made everyone's life miserable, especially Mother's. Whenever I'd call and ask how she was, she'd say, 'Weary, dear, I'm pretty weary,' because she was giving him every last bit of love she had left, like blood. Whatever she'd kept stored up for maybe her grandchildren, or us, whoever, she was giving him. It was like a transfusion: If love could keep someone alive, he could have all of hers. I've never stopped thinking about that.

"But the sad thing was, it didn't do anything for my father. He only got sicker and more demanding.

"You did what you could, Sasha. It's egotistical to think we can always save the person we love. Even if you were the perfect mate, after what happened to Phil you end up with all kinds of unlocatable guilt. My mother did, and she behaved like a saint with her man.

"Push it away; you made Phil happy. By being with him, you increased the odds in his favor and built something winning and good."

"But what if I drove him crazy?" She looked from Wyatt to me.

"Making Midnight drove him crazy, Sasha. Let's finish this damned film and get on with the rest of our lives."

As the blue airport shuttle waited in Sasha's driveway, I put my arm around Wyatt and walked with him to the van. "You'll call Blow Dry and explain what we want?"

"The only reason you're going to New York is so you don't have to ask him. Yes, I'll call. What else?"

"You have an idea of how this has to go. What I really want from you, Wyatt, is humor. The whole thing is so much fucking dreck and blood now, we're drowning in it. I want the first scene to lift us completely off the earth and put us somewhere else."

"Where, Disneyland?"

"No, not that far, but somewhere we can . . . rest from Bloodstone awhile. Somewhere we can get a little fresh air."

He nodded and we shook hands.

Sasha was at the door to the van, standing over my suitcase. "I still wish you weren't going."

I stepped up and hugged her. "I won't be gone long, and when I'm back it'll be for a while."

"That's then; this is now. Oh, Weber, I hate missing everyone. It takes up so much energy and makes you so sad. . . . Go ahead. Wyatt and I are going to Larchmont for lunch. Have a good trip and come back soon. Sooner than you said!"

Driving away, I turned around and saw the two of them standing on the sidewalk, arms at their sides, neither of them moving an inch. Both had cancer. At least one of them would be dead soon.

The trip east was uneventful. I made notes for an hour and then fell fast asleep for the rest of the flight. There are so few times or places where you're forced to turn your energy down and simply sit still for a few hours. That's why I enjoy flying, where you can only think or read or sleep. Watching a film or eating a meal on a plane is torture and not even to be discussed.

Since Phil's death I'd been on the run, so thinking long and hard about any one thing was impossible. Boarding the plane, I vowed in the next hours to try and put some of the events together in understandable order. But being away from the Strayhorn hurricane for the first time, my body shut right down and said, "Later. Now take a nap."

I awoke over upstate New York, feeling both refreshed and guilty. I'd be flying back to California in a few days, but in the meantime it felt good to be on my way home.

There were so many things that had to be done. Close up my apartment, talk to the actors, see if I could reach my old cameraman and then convince him that making a couple of scenes for a horror film would be an interesting challenge. . . .

One of the most important qualities a person needs in order to direct for a living is to be a great coaxer: money from producers, performances from actors, special angles from cameramen. . . . When I was directing movies I'd usually be exhausted by the time we began filming because of the days already spent coaxing and wheedling, stroking and reassuring so many people that what they wanted I wanted, and vice versa.

The same was true for stage directing, but in New York I was working with intense, eager people who weren't in unions or up for Oscars or scared they'd lose their shirts if we produced a bomb.

But I'd be flat-out lying if I didn't say I was also intrigued and excited about what we were doing.

The night before, Wyatt and I sat up and talked about it.

"What are we supposed to do, Weber? Fix the film so it's moral or immoral?"

"I don't know. You were there when I asked Pinsleepe the same question."

"Then what are we going to do?"

"All I know now is Blow Dry will play Bloodstone and we're going to use – from our group. Maybe we'll just put everyone together and let them talk."

His look said that wasn't the answer he wanted to hear. "Weber, I've seen all of your films many times and I think they're superb, but this isn't the same thing."