“IT IS NIGHT,” Barassini begins.
Suddenly it is. But that is all, just night without Earth or sky. I seem to be hovering in a void. It is terrifying. I think of those poor mice.
“Don’t be frightened,” he says. “You are driving.”
And I am. I am driving at night. On nothing. Toward nothing. From nothing.
“You are driving at night on a desolate road,” he continues, his voice now coming from the car’s staticky radio.
And here’s the road.
“It is bordered on either side by trees, which form a canopy overhead. You cannot see the sky, so dense is this canopy. You drive slowly, creeping along, scouring this area for signs of something buried.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” I say.
“Are you seeing what I am describing?”
“Yes. It’s frighteningly vivid. I’m frightened. By the vividability of it.”
“Good, then.”
“It’s like a movie I’m watching but I’m also in it. Embodied in it. Is this what they call Brainio?”
“Brainio?”
“Entertainment from the future,” I say.
“I have no clue what you are going on about. This is hypnotic suggestion. There is no such thing as entertainment from the future. The future does not exist. Nor does the past. There is only now. We’ve been over this.”
“I don’t feel safe.”
“Focus on your task. Always focus on your task and fear dissipates. This is Barassini’s Law.”
“What is my task?”
“You are searching for fragments of the film. Of Ingo’s lost film. I’ve made it a literal search through the detritus of your mind to help concretize the process. There is some risk of becoming lost forever within this alternate Brainio reality—”
“You said ‘Brainio.’ ”
“No, I didn’t. Anyway, there’s a risk of being forced like Charley of song fame to ‘ride forever ’neath the streets of Boston’ of your brain, but if you follow my instructions, which I call Barassini’s Technique, you should be fine.”
“It looks kind of like the road to Florida I traveled.”
“Your brain is using its memories to fill in the visuals. That’s good since your Florida memories exist in proximity to your memories of the film. This is Barassini’s Sign. Or Barassini Zeichen.”
“Will I really find it this way?”
“Find what?” says the radio voice.
“Ingo’s film.”
“Oh. That. Yes.”
The voice suddenly sounds confused and uncertain.
“I see something,” I say.
“Tell me,” says the radio.
“A pile of dirt. On the side of the road, between two trees.”
“Pull over!” he screams. “And train your hypno-headlights on that pile of dirt! Hurry!”
I do.
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Train your hypno-headlights on it?”
“I did.”
“Get out, open the trunk; you’ll find digging implements inside. Take the trowel. Dig gently. You do not want to damage what is buried there or you might become lost here forever, like Charley ’neath the streets of Boston.”
“Please stop saying that.”
“OK.”
I kneel and carefully scoop a trowel full of my “mind soil.” A cloud of smoky past skitters around on the trowel. I watch it, fascinated, nauseated, worried. I see my St. Augustine apartment from the vantage point of the bed. I am on my cellphone. Cigarette smoke hovers above me.
“Did you find anything?” the radio from inside the car asks, now slightly muted through the closed car door.
“Maybe. I’m on my bed on the phone,” I say.
“This is promising. Part of the movie is probably among all this other mind garbage. Describe what you see.”
“I’m on the phone with my girlfriend. She’s African American. You’ve most likely heard of her.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
“Just that she’s fairly well known and you have probably—”
“No. What are you saying to her?”
“I’m telling her I’ve discovered a heretofore unseen film by a brilliant elderly African American gentleman. I tell her she has never heard of him, but that will soon change. ‘What’s it about?’ she asks. ‘It’s about everything,’ I say. She says, ‘Be more specific.’ There’s impatience in her voice. ‘Well, today for example, I saw a scene in which Abbott and Costello plot a murder.’ She tells me she doesn’t have time for nonsense right now, she has to memorize her lines for tomorrow, she hates Abbott and Costello, that they are wypipo’s idea of humor. I say, ‘But as I mentioned, this movie was made by an elderly African American gentleman.’ She’s talking over me; she’s describing the scene she’s memorizing: ‘It’s a tough scene,’ she says, ‘in which I am brutally raped. Very violent.’ ‘They were Abbott and Costello and yet they were not Abbott and Costello,’ I tell her. ‘To fully understand this it is necessary to hold both their Abbott and Costello–ness and their non-Abbott and non-Costello–ness in your brain at the same time.’ ‘My most important scene,’ she says. ‘Everything hinges on this scene. I have to prepare. Trust me, it doesn’t help that the actor I’m playing against is the nicest, most sexually attractive man I’ve ever met, and I have to find within me some sort of hatred toward—’ ”
“Stop,” says the radio. “This memory is no longer helpful for our process. Wipe it away gently with that soft-bristled brush by your side. Gently! Or you might die! There’s a good chance you’ll find a piece of the film underneath, and that is what we need to pursue.”
“When I wipe it away, is it gone forever?” I ask.
“Like smoke,” says the radio.
I hesitate, then brush it away.
“Done,” I say.
I feel lighter.
“Do you see the Abbott and Costello scene? I’m expecting you’ll find that.”
The radio is right. That memory is a rabbit hole. There it sits, a gleaming, cinematic moment, and now I am in it. The scene is so alive, even though I am on a miniature set with puppets.
“Tell me,” says the radio.
I am climbing a hill at night, not in Florida, which has no hills, as you may or may not know. Somewhere else. It is dark. Oh. I recognize it now as the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, but not currently. No Hollywood hipsters. The automobiles are old; 1940s? This is the Los Feliz of Raymond Chandler. There sits Bud Abbott on a rock, smoking a cigarette, looking out over the city. Deep in thought. A dark convertible drives up. A Cadillac? I think so, but then I am not really a car person. The white canvas top is up. It parks, and chubby Lou Costello steps out. Abbott doesn’t look over as Costello sits on the next rock over. That they’ve had meetings here before is clear to me; I don’t know how I know. Silence. Abbott breaks it:
“Why couldn’t we speak on the telephone? Betty made meatloaf. My favorite. It’ll be cold by the time I get home.”
“The walls have ears, Bud.”
“For God’s sake, Lou. Who would want to listen to our conversation?”
“Millions of people and I want to make certain it stays that way.”
“You’re confusing me.”
“Well, as we both know, confusing you is not the most complex of tasks.”
“What are you saying?”
“Exactly my point.”
“Speak plain, Lou.”
“Our ascendancy may be coming to an end.”
“Ascendancy? See? Why you gotta use those highfalutin—”
“All right, Bud, plain and simple, just for you: There is an up-and-coming team of buffoons, one hefty and one meager. Does this excite either of your brainial nerve endings?”
“Speak plain, Lou, for the love of all things holy.”
“Mudd and Molloy are encroaching on my—our—territory. I will not have my—our—thunder stolen by the likes of anyone, let alone the likes of those two interlopers.”
“Like in ‘Home on the Range’?”
“Those are antelopes, not interlopers. And inaccurate to boot. There are no North American antelopes.”
“Then who?”
“The comedy team that looks like us.”
“That fat and skinny duo?”
“Indeed. Bingo. Give the lady a cigar.”
“What lady, Lou?”
“It’s an expression, my friend. We need to stop Mudd and Molloy.”
“It’s a big world, Lou. Enough to go around.”
“Tell that to Wheeler and Woolsey.”
“I can’t. Bob Woolsey died in ’38.”
“Exactly.”
“You lost me.”
“I often fantasize about that.”
“Come again?”
“Sigh. Robert Woolsey needed to be gone. And so he was.”
“What are you saying, Lou?”
“Jesus, Bud. I killed him. For us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Bob died of kidney failure. Everyone knows that.”
“Everyone knows what I want them to know!” spits Costello.
“What are you saying, Lou?”
“Holy Christ, you’re a tree stump. I killed Woolsey to make room for us.”
“What are you saying, Lou?”
“I wonder if Gabby Hayes might be interested in replacing you in the act. Might make our repartee more scintillating.”
“He’s a cowboy sidekick, Lou. Not a straight man. I don’t get your point.”
“I’ll make this simple for you: Woolsey died from kidney failure, yes. But slow poisoning by arsenic was the cause.”
“Who would slowly poison Bob Woolsey?”
“I would, Bud. I would. And I did, as I already told you more times than several.”
“But why?”
“Because, my mustachioed nincompoop, Hollywood is not big enough for Wheeler and Woolsey and Abbott and Costello.”
“But didn’t Bob live on the west side? Santa Monica, I think. Not Hollywood. I’m certain Betty and I visited him in Santa Monica, not Hollywood, that one time when he was dying of kidney failure. So you didn’t have to worry about him taking up room in Hollywood, after all.”
“Yes. Yes, he did live on the west side. Y’know, Bud, I’m not sure if you’re so dumb because you were repeatedly dropped on your head as a baby or you were repeatedly dropped on your head as a baby because you were so dumb and the people dropping you, namely your parents, weren’t overly concerned about protecting your head because you were so dumb to begin with.”
“That’s a long way to go for that particular comic insult, Lou.”
“Nonetheless, and please try to stay with me here, if you value your way of life and would like to maintain it, we need to address the problem of Mudd and Molloy.”
“The comedy team?”
“Yes. They need to be stopped.”
“Why?”
Costello performs a lovely, extended slow burn. It is a work of art.
“All right,” he says, finally, “here is my plan. They will be shooting their first two-reeler next week. It’s to be called Here Come a Coupla Fellas and it is quite good, script-wise. I was able to get a hold of it by first killing the script girl, then stealing it from her apartment, which I ransacked. If this film sees the light of day, I fear our position as the preeminent comic duo of our time may be threatened. I propose we put a definitive stop to Mudd and Molloy on their very first day of shooting, before any damage can be done.”
“But how?”
“Let’s just say I know the best boy on that production.”
“What’s his job on the production?”
“Who?”
“The best boy.”
“He’s the best boy.”
“I get that you like him, Lou, but what’s his job?”
“He’s the best boy.”
“Fine, but what’s his job?”
“That’s his job.”
“What is?”
“Best boy.”
“But what’s his job?”
There is a long, long silence, during which Costello again burns magnificently slow. Then he speaks:
“In any event, he’s going to loosen all the bolts on the overhead grid so it will fall at the moment in the haberdashery scene when Molloy slams the door, thus killing Mudd and Molloy forever and ensuring our birthright.”
“I wouldn’t think the best boy you know on the production would do something so awful.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it doesn’t sound best at all. Maybe he’s the worst boy on the production. Irresponsible boy, at the very least.”
“He’s doing my bidding.”
“Why, Lou?”
“Because I want Mudd and Molloy dead.”
“But that’s m-m-m-m-murder.”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
Another silence. Another slow burn.
“You do know that Mudd’s first name is Bud, right, Bud?”
“Hey, Bud’s my name.”
“Yes, Bud.”
“I mean, really my name is William Alexander Abbott. But people call me Bud. Because my mom did.”
“I’m aware of that. Doesn’t it seem to you that someone shouldn’t steal your name, Bud?”
“Well, I still have my name, Lou. If he had stolen my name, you couldn’t call me Bud anymore and you just did. See?”
“He even wears the same mustache as you.”
Bud feels his upper lip, laughs.
“Now you’re just being silly,” says Bud.
“Good night, Bud.”
“Good night, Lou.”
Costello walks to his car.
“Betty says you and Anne should come over soon for meatloaf!”
Costello gets in his car with nary a backward glance and drives off. Abbott lights another cigarette, stares out at L.A. at night. I sit down next to him, a great sadness overcoming me.
“Now what?” comes the radio voice.
I look up to see the scene has changed.
“I am on a movie set. I see two comedians, younger but similar in appearance to Abbott and Costello. This must be Mudd and Molloy on the set of Here Come a Coupla Fellas. The crew bustles. The air is charged with electricity and—”
“What? What’s happening?” says the voice now coming from nowhere.
“It went black. I can’t see it anymore.”
“Find it.”
“It’s gone. Everything is black.”
“What do you see then?”
“Just dirt now. And blackness.”
“What’s in the hole?”
I look in the hole. More dirt.
“More dirt,” I say.
“Well, fine. Great. You’re a real cock tease, Rosenberg. Anyway, that’s our time for today so…,” says the voice, followed by a finger snap.