Film Maker

The bass brings in the count. Some one’s on the ivories, playing that quiet measured beat out. It’s cool, languorous, and indulgent. There’s so much smoke around. I feel like have walked into a movie that's playing a dream sequence in black and white. I expect to meet the love of my life here. Painted ladies, smiling sweetly, walk around me to meet some expectant short term paramour. I don’t belong here and they sense it. I guess the denim matched with a round neck t shirt and a coat, don’t fit their idea of a regular. Good for them too, because I am broke.

I ask the woman rushing around with a glass of water on a silver tray, for table number five. She points in the general direction of the washroom at the end of this sad little restaurant that must have been cool in the 50s or 60s or whenever such things were in fashion. It’s a place for tragic old men now, sitting in groups or alone with fancy glasses full of gin and tonic or whisky and soda. It swarms with the slime of the city and those who profit of it, all full of pretend sophistication and badly faked refinement. The man on the piano starts to sing an Elton John song. He doesn’t really fit in here either: he is too young, too handsome and too full of life to be employed by this time capsule seeping in slow decay through the cracks where reality could access it. I am mistaken. All that heaved out smoke has blinded me. It’s a girl, dressed like a man, with short cropped hair and no make up at all. He looks like one at least.

Table five is the smallest in the restaurant. It can seat two and occupies a minute space triangulated with the washroom in the same corner, and the band and a wall. It has not been cleaned yet and someone’s half eaten burger lies amidst several paper napkins drowned in green mayonnaise. Did that man-girl at the piano look at me a little too long? I look around to get someone to clear the table. The silver tray woman passes me twice, giving it little attention. The song’s over. The bassist yawns. The singer walks towards my table, smoking this big lean cigarette. It’s a woman alright, the curves hidden away in some ridiculous checked shirt that’s at least three times too big for her.
“Why are you trying to get rid of my burger?” she drawls out. She does not fit a single word, line or sentence in that letter I was carrying folded and creased, in my pocket. I imagine her face super-imposed on the letter reading out the lines with that blank expression they have when they look straight into that camera. Not her.
I shrug and give her my apology “I’d asked for table number five and that lady pointed me here”
“This is table five alright”, she says, letting out a cloud of smoke through an unpracticed O of the mouth. “You got my letter. You are late” I am falling in love with this woman already. That drawl of hers sends old memories shivering up my brain cells.
“Care for a drink?” I ask. She nods shrugs and sits at the other end, chewing down the burger quickly. She looks around at her band, as they unwire, coil and pack. There are two boys there, one on bass and the other on guitar. They wave at her, unsmiling and she ignores them, turning back to concentrate on the fries on the table. I ask the man in the stained white shirt who takes the orders, for a beer and ask her for hers. He’s already gone. He returns with a can of Budweiser and a glass of whisky with a cube of ice.
I let the can fizz and try to do the “Cheers!” bit, but she’s on her second sip anyways.
“So what do you suppose I should do?” she asks
I snap out of my fancies. I like this part of me that can talk business to even the prettiest of women dispassionately.
“I charge twenty five hundred a day plus expenses” I ask her.
“Of course not”, she says, blowing out smoke away from me, turning her face to show me a beautifully intricate ear surrounded by dark curls, tiny nose and thin stretched lips. “If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t be working here would I?”
I continue drinking my beer.
“I will give you twenty five hundred all inclusive”
“Not if it involves too much gas and leg work.”
“I can afford you for three days. You have to find a man. He made off with my thirty thousand or more. I was stupid to have kept it all at home. He is a good looking fellow though and got me this job thinking I would sleep with him out of gratitude.” She exhales smoke with a grace I never knew a smoker to have. Women smoke to exhibit some sense of power to men and this show of control. Men smoke out of boredom and for company- Never a woman.
“Where does he live?”
“He lived some where around the Presidency. He worked here as a bartender. He hasn’t turned up, of course” She wrote out the address on the paper napkin and drew some intricate geometric patterns around it as she spoke.
“How do you know it was him that took the money?”
“The money disappeared with him. He’d slept in my place the night before.”
“Sixty hundred all inclusive no matter how long I take,” I tell her. “I need a thousand now and three days time”
She takes five hundred from her denim’s back pocket and gives me the crumpled unrecognizable mess along with his photograph. It’s a picture of the two of them against the Taj Mahal. He took her to quite a few places before he got her the job. She looks three years younger in it and he looks like filth.
“That’s all I have. And we’ll make it Fifty hundred more when you get me the money. Got to go play my solo piece now” I nod and give her the card I have printed with my own number on it. She takes it and walks back to the piano.
Her band is long gone. She starts singing “Hey Jude”.
A decrepit disaster of a man obstructs the view as he starts slow dancing with one of the painted women, who is all fake embarrassed laughter and encouragement.
I ask for the bill. The man charges me for the burger, the double Imperial scotch and beer.

I start at the address she scrawled into the thin napkin. It’s late and the street is empty. Every one’s home by now: they are watching soaps on the TV, arguing over dinner, making love or expecting rain. He lived in a dirty government built shack. I pass the balconies with clotheslines. They are grey, unpainted and over look a fly over on one side. They have barred windows, curtained out with dirty towels and underwear. I step over five scrawny children who fight loudly, unmoving on the stair case. Three flights up I reach his door, one of five tightly shut crevasses that somehow all manage to face each other. I knock five evenly spaced times. The fifth time, I hear shuffling of feet inside and a drunk with an unintelligent face opens the door. His grey head contrasts the red alcohol soaked eyes. I tell him the name of the man I am looking for.
“Why?’ he asks, suspicious.
“He owes my boss some money”
He is happy to hear that. He gives this wicked laugh, amused at somebody else’s troubles.
“Tell your boss that his man has made the run for it. He packed all he has three nights back and disappeared. Ha ha ha!”
I put on this tone of menace and ask him if he would like to pay on his friend’s behalf, uncle. That sobers him up some. He gets annoyed and then scared and then sulky. It takes him three minutes to swing between these emotions.
“Why don’t you go get if from his brother, if you have the guts?” he spits.
His brother runs the local liquor joint. They are closing by the time I reach it.
When I ask for the boss, the boy at the counter tells me to meet him at his office tomorrow. The office is in the ground floor of the same building. I ask him for two cans of beer. He charges me twice the rate. When I start to complain, he takes them back, asking me to find another this late in the night. I pay up and finish off a can standing there. I take the other home, read her letter again and watch late night crap on the television, beer in hand. I think I am in love.

The telephone rings loud and uninterrupted to threaten me out of a dream. The television beams colorless glowing static and the sharp naked yellow electric light makes me feel lonelier than ever. The darkness outside my window is silent. The phone grates loudly, troubling me, filling me with a sense of dread. I answer and I know it’s her.
“I had to call you now”, she says in a small scared voice. “I am so sorry to wake you up. I am fine. I don’t want you to go after him any more. You can have the five hundred I gave you. Please”
“Why?” I ask. I get the dull beeping tone of a line gone dead on the other end.
Two Fifty Am. I am sleepy, scared, wide awake and faintly alert. My mouth’s dry and I can hear myself breathe harder.
I play her voice back in my head. I play back the sounds in the back ground, the static hiss-the small voice that had sounded so distant. Why did she say that she had to call me then? Was she being threatened?
I don’t know where she lives. I decide to go now and find her. I ask myself if she is worth it and feel embarrassed by the thought. I think of her fingers around the cigarette. She had tried to look so cool in the evening. Beneath all that was this sad scared little woman. I have to protect her, shield her. I love her. I hate myself for not knowing what to do. I hardly know the woman.

I step out into the heavy night that radiates heat. Three dogs chase me barking with blood lust and give up when they see my face. The streets are filled with yesterday’s garbage and vermin. Two street lights flicker like the shadows of ghosts. Where am I going? I don’t know. I am scared of the night for no reason. I tuck my right hand into the pocket that carries my gun. I decide to walk to the bar she works in.
When I reach the end of my lane and start walking up the main street, I hear a voice behind me. It’s a slurred, whining whisper “Where do you think you are going?”
I turn around quickly to land my fist on his face, but there are two of them there. A heavy built shadow that towers above me by some five inches hits me on the head with something like iron. I hit the pavement, break my nose, bleed and pass out.
I wake up eyes to the hard biting stones of the pavement, to the first sound of the milk van passing me by. He moves on, pausing for all of three seconds, classifying me as too drunk or as a police case- some body else’s problem. My head can explode any moment. My nose is cut. My gun is cold to the touch, intact. They could have killed me if they had wanted to. They had just wanted to teach me that old lesson. Where was she?

I am mad. I have nothing going on my head. I have no emotions. I am blank. My head aches so bad I scream once. The dogs bark. A couple of lights turn on in the distant apartments. No one else bothers. Day light turns off the street lamps into dull white tubes and glass baskets. The morning air is unmarked- new. It hurts the cut inside my nose.
The liquor joint is closed and shuttered. I kick it once, twice, thrice, countless times. I call her name. I call out to him. I haven’t noticed the small door next to it that within its entrails holds the dark and narrow staircase bound tightly within old walls. It opens and this dull short dark beast walks up. He wears nothing but tiny tight red trunks. The rest is muscle, well oiled, glistening in hairless skin. He is bald and might have a genial look- if he wasn’t trying to have an angry scowl, like he did now. He seems irritated to see me. I ask for his boss. He says something that could have been smart in his world but makes no sense to me. He slaps the back of my head twice. It sets it all loose. I take five steps back and draw the gun. He stops: freezes. That genial look comes in. He tells me not to get so serious and get myself into trouble I will not understand. He looks terrified. He is not sure if he has to be the man he would like to be or admit that he is afraid. I walk back facing him to the end of the street and run. He shouts at my back. He tells me that they know where I live.

I run fast enough to stop thinking. I need a drink. Seven AM. My room is lit by pale morning light. I have stashed away a bottle of Glenlivet for that special occasion. I had bought if when I turned twenty five- several ages back. I wasn’t so alone then. I was. It was for the day when I meet the girl of my life. It’s all down the drain now. The bottle opens with a pop that could have been cheerful. It’s stale old air escaping. I pour myself half the glass and I drink it up in five parched sips. It’s beautiful and smooth and unforgiving. It fills my nostrils and throat in sweet little fumes. I cannot sleep now, I know. I latch the door, push a chair against the knob and wait. The alcohol has done nothing to my pain. It lulls me into weird thoughts of her placed in my childhood situations and daily life. Why am I thinking about her so often? I see her imperfections now- the mole on the tip of her nose, two worry lines starting on the forehead, the age showing in her hands. I am fascinated. She plays the piano and sings so softly. The blood from the nose starts flowing again. I pinch it hard. I am too numb to feel anything now. I catch myself nodding off twice.

They are here.
They knock the door back by the count of five. There are five of them. The short ape and the giant choose to stand at the door. The scene also features the drunk, a respectable looking man with grey hair and him.
The drunk lumbers up aimlessly to the toilet door and stands undecided. The respectable looking man looks for a place to sit and chooses my table and looks on silent.
“You’ve been looking for me?” he asks
I get up and hold out my hand for the shake. He is more interested in playing the- cool gangster who can wreck your life this moment- stereotype. He has got the frown, the tone, the posture- modeled after some cheap villain with a two minute bit part in countless movies. The drunk eyes my Glenlivet.
“Lay off!” he enunciates slowly in that tone that sounds very deep and meaningful.
I am lost here of course. I have no idea who these gentlemen are and what it is that they are so worried about protecting. I don’t like them. I ask the only question that comes to mind.
“Where is she?” I ask.
This amuses the grey wise man. He guffaws heartily in a deep male voice that can sound like the father I have never heard for a while. Ape and giant join in like movie acolytes.
The drunk opens the bottle and sniffs it and whines “Scotch” appreciatively.
Their laughter gets to me. It reminds me of everything that is wrong with my life- taken for granted, worthless, unloved, a subject for ridicule or non concern. It tells me I am a wage earner in a country of the newly rich and the dirty. They laugh so hard at a loser. They know that the best I could ever be is a cheap hit man for a security agency, cheating my boss out of work to make a little more money. They know I have read a letter unaddressed to me. I pull my gun. They are expecting this. But the drunk screws it up. He rushes unplanned at me, trying to dash my bottle against my head. He distracts everybody. I shoot the right lung out of my target. The bottle becomes useless pieces of liquid and glass against the Wiseman’s face. His pain fills the room in shrieks as the alcohol burns the blood. Ape and giant are confused and look at the drunk who collapses sobbing. I run out. It’s dark again outside. It’s evening already.

I cannot run so well now. The air cuts into that still-bleeding nose. My gun is warm. I realize I am holding it out for every one to see. I throw it away. I fling it as far as I could into that garbage dump with dogs. I have to get away. I have to find her and get away. I am not thinking too well. I think I stopped doing that well a long time back. Where do I go now? They will find out about this soon. Somebody would have heard that shot, even in that desolate no man’s land I call home. I have messed it all up. All I had wanted was some stealthy little money. Now I was wanted for murder and was in love with an unknown woman gone missing. She is so beautiful. I will kill two more to kiss those lips. I can get a bus to Town, take the train to the Beach and bribe my way into a boat off the country. Will she come with me?

I am here at her place again. She is there alright. She is alone on the piano. She is singing a Dylan song. “How does it feel?” she sings looking at no one in particular “To be unknown?”
There is hardly any one around. It’s too early for the sweet old whores and their genteel customers. She looks up from the piano and sees right through me. It must be the light I think.
I walk in to go to her. Someone taps me on the back. It’s that dumb new office boy.
“Boss has been looking for you” he tells me. “Boss found the letter and thought you would be here. He says you are fired and it would be great if you can meet Boss now for your own good.”

It’s a set up. It always was. I have seen this movie too.