LITMIR.BIZ

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      He hesitates to agree, but finally, in a hard, stiff nod of his head, he does—then, turning away, picks up his magazine again.

      “I just get really pissed off when I read shit like this,” says Ras, flicking through Black Heat with his head to one side, sucking from a bottle of Beechams, which is part vodka, part Frangelico and part pineapple and comes in at 33%.

      “No talent,” he says, looking up at me. “You know what I mean. Pokes like Madden have just got no talent.”

      I notice Ras is dressed in a black t-shirt and an embroidered carpet bag waistcoat. He wears his hair long, in a pony tail, and amazingly still carries a pager, rejecting all talk of a WAP, cellular or mobile system (it’s apparently something called a Mynilta TX101 which has, he proudly, pokeshly, tells me, nine musical alerts). He’s been at USP four years now and, although his MS degree was only supposed to last a year, he has extended twice and now has no more possible extensions and must finish before the summer.

      Because Ras works at The Roxy a lot of people passing stop to talk. One guy, pure Neanderthal, possibly a gymnast or something, a weightlifter, is wondering why they never show Prime Cut. Why anyone would want a Michael Ritchie Film starring Sissy Spacek is beyond me, though Gene Hackman does his usual admirable Popeye Doyle and the thing is held together by a bunch of completely deviant hicks who inhabit a country fair in the Midwest. There’s also a respectable wheat field chase scene; but isn’t that just a little too North By Northwest? Hardly original is it?

      “So,” says Ras, “Milroy tried to top himself? A friend of mine—Gary You know? Works in the USP Staff Club?—says that he personally always thought the guy was a full blown soup kitchen. From my experience, I gotta agree with that. You know, he used to have these regular film parties at his place and . . .”

      I prick up at the sound of this, but Ras won’t go on.

      “Fook-hit, I shouldn’t talk!”

      “I didn’t hear about that,” I say, interest severely piquing. “About those. His film parties. When was this?”

      Ras, shaking his head in a weird kind of circular fashion, seems lost on this. “A month or two back . . . I don’t know. A month ago maybe. He sure used to do some heavy gear. Hyoscine and thiorpropazate mostly, I think. Anyway, you should know that. He’s one crazy pup.”

      I have known Ras since July when he was a USP peer guide on a postgraduate induction tour and we spent two hours together being bussed around the Harbor Zoo while a guy called Louth described his alstroemeria aurantiaca, or whatever, and the commitment that all the Southport teaching staff have to transferable learning skills. Dr Francis Louth, who apparently is a world specialist on amphibians, toads, newts, their slime and slimy habits, and just to prove this point was dressed in a toadish charcoal blazer and amphibious taupe twills.

      “Anyway, forget that. You played Outwars yet?”

      “No,” I say, closing in on him, still wondering about these film parties that Milroy was supposed to have had.

      “Frankly,” Ras says, looking into my phone, “if he don’t put my name in the credits I’ll be telling everyone you’re actually remaking Klute.”

      “What, and you’re Jane Fonda?”

      I notice now that he’s ridden his bike because his helmet is under my seat. Meanwhile, the place is filling up and the singular narrative (one section neatly slotting into the next like a fishing pole), which I hoped would hold my film together in a way that a film hangs around a certain set of recognizable motifs or images (such as the whores in Interview With A Vampire or the 1961 Ferrari in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and, in Karen’s case, in my film about her which is suffering from her complete detachment from things lately, the battle between good and evil which could, in fact, go either way) is slipping away into something more like a concert film and, to be honest, I’m getting annoyed.

      “Are you ready for this?” asks Ras.

      But seriously, I really am getting annoyed. I can’t help it: I’m thinking about Steve Milroy lying their naked with this head in a bag, the bag steamed up like some kind of Chinese take-out bag, his eyes rolled back in his head and the slim-line venetians closed, and I can smell his office (though it is probably really the smell of nachos which they do here, or the potato skins, veggie-burgers, seafood platters) and I want to shout out:

      “Excuse me, my film is not a genre film!

      “This is not some formulaic studio film that you can manipulate and ruin!”

      On the other hand, it really is a unique achievement to have phone-filmed an attempted suicide (if that’s what it was?), to have caught on film the moment at which one ordinary guy was, let’s face it, out-of-here. I feel I know the guy a little better at least because of it. In that sense, I’m even more concerned about Karen’s new, weird attitude. Not least, because I have a genuine moment of life and death in front of me and, because of her attitude making me wonder about my own life, my own steady, unrelenting march toward death, I play it again and again. At will.

      “You know,” I say, “I have an idea.”

      “Wait a minute,” says Ras. “I was trying to tell you something. Guess what?”

      Now at this point I can either say “What?” or ask him why he didn’t mention that he’d come on his bike which means we won’t be staying here tonight because when he bikes he always wants to ride somewhere, usually out to the western suburbs to the Lizard Lounge which used to be, I’d guess, a pinball parlor in, maybe, the ’70s, perhaps there was even eight-ball!, but now has racing simulations and infantry strategy games, graphic platformers, tank strategies and the newest arcade Toonstruck. But instead, because I’m annoyed that I’m going to have to cut most of this out and then there’s the question of how to distil a dramatic premise from Karen’s extremely notable big-fit absence, and because I have an idea which maybe will solve everything if Ras would just shut up, I don’t say anything, just sit back in my chair and focus on the blackboard menu which features, this evening, a Special Fruit Fool.

      “Okay, then,” says Ras, “this is it. If I fail my degree, I’m going to Honduras.”

      Hell, I think, if I was just shooting this with an Aaton 8–35 or a Mitchell BNC I wouldn’t have to worry about whether I’m going to suffer generational losses when transferring tape to tape, and possibly color shift in the direction of red and, if I’m out of luck, picture break up.

      “So?” says Ras.

      “What?” I say, though I heard the first time and I’m simply wondering how this fits with my plans, the film I’m making, where it came from, what it means and so forth.

      “Why’s that?” I say.

      But Ras won’t answer. He just repeats in a strangely rushed and high tone. “Honduras, yeah. It’s one remote fook of a country, Ciaran, that’s for sure.”

      I figure this idea has got to have come about from his study of plants in sub-tropical regions, or from his loving avocadoes, or from how many times in Candia he’s ordered esquites or ensalada de jimcama, or from the fact he is the only person I know that knows anything about the work of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo (Confidencias, Dona Herlinda and Her Two Son,s etc) and over the years here at USP has championed his films.

      “You don’t know anything about Honduras,” I blatantly lie.

      Two lush girls from the Halfmarket, who I think actually want to move into Langford Terrace, and who work in NEXT, have noticed I’m shooting them and they pucker up like Monroe or Mamie Van Doren (or so they think) and I give them the thumbs up because if you’re that stupid you need some attention. I zoom in on Gary Oldman, who’s having a bad hair day, but what does he care, he’s a hard man (as his performance in Sid and Nancy proves).

      “Manzanillo,” says Ras. “Chihauhua. Guadalajara.”

      “You’ve got to be joking!” I’m saying this while drinking a Lilli,

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